























































































































LORD JIM 










LORD JIM 

A ROMANCE 


BY 

JOSEPH CONRAD 



GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1922 


















# 



1> o ^ to c \ o 

~X 2 - 


COPYRIGHT, 1899 AND 19OO, BY 

JOSEPH CONRAD 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 


MR. and MRS. G. F. W. HOPE 

WITH GRATEFUL AFFECTION 
AFTER MANY YEARS 
OF 


FRIENDSHIP 




JOSEPH CONRAD 

THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 

By WILLIAM McFEE 

It was Francis Grierson, some years ago, in a brief ar¬ 
ticle in the New Age , who first called attention to the 
very remarkable qualities of a book called “The Nigger of 
the Narcissus,” just then published by Heinemann at a 
shilling. It was a slim, scarlet, easily held book, de¬ 
signed to read in bed, pack in a grip, lend to a friend, 
or slip in the pocket against a rail journey in the middle 
of the day, when the morning paper had been read and 
the evening journals were not yet on the stands. It may 
have been by design that this article came out just at 
that moment, for Heinemann was an admirable tactician. 
Bad literature was abhorrent to him, as may be seen by 
the books bearing his imprimatur; but he doubtless saw 
no reason why a man who published fine books should not 
let it get about, or should refrain from mentioning it in 
a friendly way. It may be remarked that a number of 
English publishers at that time were in the habit of is¬ 
suing books in a manner that can only be described as 
virtuously surreptitious. They did good by stealth. It 
would not do to say that any house ever published a book 
without informing its shipping department, but it 
amounted to that in the long run. Mr. Heinemann was 
not that sort of publisher. Francis Grierson’s article 
appeared in the New Age; the slim red book appeared in 
the bookstores; and a new light shone before the present 

vii 


JOSEPH CONRAD 


viii 

writer. For the first time in his life he became aware 
of the existence of a writer named Conrad. 

It was an extraordinary experience. It was also a very 
chastening one. For the present writer had not only 
written but published a book of his own, dealing with the 
sea and with seamen. He had grown up in a genuine tra¬ 
dition of the mercantile marine. Sea captains had been 
so close to him all his life that he accepted them as part 
of the surrounding landscape. A long period of literary 
and artistic gestation in Chelsea had somewhat alienated 
him from the rich humanity of his seafaring relatives. 
And here in “The Nigger of the Narcissus” he found 
them again transfigured to heroic dimensions, like the 
sombre and enormous shadows of grown-ups on the 
nursery wall. 

It was in Glasgow on an evening in late summer that 
the present writer walked along Sauchiehall Street and, 
turning down Radnor and Finniestonn streets, entered 
the Queen’s Dock, where his ship lay. “The Nigger of 
the Narcissus” was under his arm. The rays of the set¬ 
ting sun still threw a twilight and roseate glamour over 
the interminable ridge of the Hills of Old Kilpatrick; 
and with the story of the “Nigger” yet vibrating in his 
brain, he made his way up the gangway and descended the 
short ladder to the iron deck of the elderly freighter. It 
is not too much to say that he regarded her shapely old 
hull and comfortable quarters with profound affection. 
Built some fifteen years before for the nine-knot Austra¬ 
lian trade, she was now relegated to the shorter voyages 
to the Mediterranean. We had been a long time to¬ 
gether, commander, mates, engineers, including the don- 
keyman, the carpenter, and the engine-storekeeper. The 
last three were much more like the characters in a dream 
play than quick active seamen. The donkeyman was a 
Turk and lived in a sort of solitary and immaculate re- 


THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 


IX 


tirement in a three-cornered cabin in the forecastle. The 
carpenter was a Norwegian, and haunted the steering- 
house aft, where he shut himself up and fashioned models 
of fabulous sailing ships. The storekeeper, who owned 
to the entirely inadequate name of Prank Freshwater, 
was a willing and diminutive Englishman with a large 
nose and an immense military moustache. He was known 
to speak to both donkeyman and Chips, and in fact may 
have been created for the sole purpose of communicating 
between them; but even that degree of loquacity dried 
up on nearing Glasgow. He was the sad proprietor of 
a ferocious virago who would appear on the quay with 
miraculous promptitude the moment the gangway slid 
over, and wait relentlessly for him to appear. He never 
did appear, it is necessary to add. The whole ship’s 
company became enthusiastic sporting accessories to the 
fact of poor old Freshwater’s unobtrusive escape, while 
some hardened married man goaded the virago to par- 
ox} T sms of absurd rage, until the dock policeman walked 
stolidly in our direction, preening his moustache. 

And the principal bond between all of us there on that 
ship was a very honest liking for the Chief. The Turk 
once said to the present writer who was second engineer 
at the time, “Ze cheef, ee iz my fazzer ”—and was so 
prostrated with that display of dramatic and emotional 
volubility that he did not speak again for a fortnight— 
unless he talked to himself. To Frank Freshwater the 
Chief presented another and equally admirable facet : 
“One of the truest men who ever stood in shoe-leather.” 
Frank’s estimate is quoted because it was a very accurate 
description. The Chief was just that. And as the 
present writer came aboard with “The Nigger of the 
Narcissus” under his arm, he beheld the burly form of 
the Chief, standing by the door of the port alleyway, 
stripped to the waist, his large, pale, hairy arms folded, 


X 


JOSEPH CONRAD 


his bosom screened from view by his patriarchal beard, 
smoking a cigarette in the end of a long black holder. 

“Well,” said he, taking the holder from his lips and 
looking down at the great curve of his abdomen, “did 
you have a good time ?” 

Simple words, expressing a simple kindly considera¬ 
tion; yet by virtue of the magical tale just read, the 
present writer saw those words in a new and enchanting 
light. He saw perhaps for the first time in his literary 
life the true function of dialogue as a resonant and 
plangent element through which the forms and charac¬ 
ters of men can be projected upon the retina of the reader. 
He became aware of a more subtle music in the very shape 
and timbre of the long-familiar phrases. And behind the 
amiable superior and valuable shipmate he suddenly saw 
that quiet, attentive, bearded man as a character in a book, 
the unconscious victim of a future work of art. 

This is a great stride in life—to get behind the switch¬ 
board, as one may say, and see even for a brief illuminat¬ 
ing moment the various resistances and insulations, the 
connection to earth, without which one’s impact upon 
humanity is a floating foolish pose. The author who 
does this for you is for ever memorable, quite apart from 
his intrinsic value to* the public. 

I said, “Yes, I had a good time.” And I added with 
a curious feeling of diffident exultation, “I have a book 
here I would like you to read. It seems to me rather 
good.” 

He took it and at once made that faint and somewhat 
vague gesture which invariably accompanied a gentle 
murmur of apology about his glasses. Turning to the 
low door leading to his room, we passed in. There was 
no dynamo on that ship, and a study-lamp with a brown 
shade stood on a little desk by the settee. Adjusting a 
pair of spectacles on his nose, the Chief opened the book 


THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 


xi 


and began to read the title-page. He stood there—a re¬ 
markable nude figure with his shining bald head and 
venerable beard—holding the volume at arm’s length 
and looking down through his glasses with severe atten¬ 
tion. The first page and the second were read and 
turned, and he never moved. 

So I left him and went round to my cabin on the star¬ 
board side. The ship was moving under the coal-tips 
early next morning, and it was due to this that some time 
after midnight I was still about, and noticed the light 
still burning in his room. I went in. He was standing 
there turning the last immortal pages. He had put on 
an old patrol coat and had buttoned it absently over his 
beard. I have often thought that Conrad must have met 
him somewhere: he is so exactly presented in “Heart of 
Darkness” as the amiable engineer of the river boat who 
put his beard in a bag to keep it clean. The discerning 
will recall that person’s bald head, whose hair—Conrad 
whimsically observes—had fallen to his chin, where it 
had prospered. He lowered his head and looked at me 
over his' glasses as I made some professional remark, 
and laid the book down. 

“A funny thing,” he observed in his quiet precise 
voice. “This nigger says a girl chucked the third en¬ 
gineer of a Rennie boat for him.” He stroked his beard 
with a broad powerful palm. “You know, / was third of 
a Rennie boat in my young days.” He meditated for a 
moment and added, “That book makes you feel, some¬ 
how.” 

A notable reflection. 

And as time went on it became a habit of the present 
writer to experiment on his shipmates by noting their 
reactions to the works of Conrad. The point to remem¬ 
ber is that, neglecting certain easily explained failures, 
men reacted in direct ratio to their integrity of cliarac- 


Xll 


JOSEPH COXIIAD 


'ter. The cunning, the avaricious, and the ignoble are 
not admirers off Conrad. There is something in the 
style and the spirit which reaches surely and inexorably 
down into a man’s moral resources and sounds them for 
him. To those who in the jargon of the red-blooded 
fraternity want a story, it is to be feared our author does 
not appeal. This was exemplified by “Typhoon” which 
was tried upon a naval reserve officer, a brisk efficient 
resourceful young man with an acute “examination brain.” 
His criticism was brief and emphatic. “You could write 
the whole story on a couple of sheets of foolscap,” he 
grumbled. “There’s nothing to it; too far-fetched as 
well.” He shut the book with a sudden snap of fingers 
and thumb, and passed it back, promptly forgetting the 
whole affair. He is neither cunning, avaricious, nor ig¬ 
noble, but he is afflicted with the modern conception of 
efficiency. For him romance lies in the past of high¬ 
waymen, knights in shining armour, and Machiavellian 
cardinals of inconceivable obliquity. 

To a writer who has indulged his humour by watching 
seafaring folk in their reactions as mentioned above, the 
collected prefaces which Conrad has written for the Sun 
Dial edition of his works, under the title of “Notes of 
My Books,” have a very special interest. They tell with 
a direct and disarming candour the authentic origin of 
the tales. The troublesome enthusiast who is for ever 
seeking the fiction which is “founded on fact” will get 
small comfort here, for here are the facts. It is the 
penalty of success in the fictional art to illumine the ob¬ 
scure experiences of worthy members of the public and 
convince them that such and such an affair “actually 
happened.” These folk are very timid at trying their 
wings. They dread leaving the solid earth behind. It 
is a positive comfort to them to feel that the things which 
have touched their hearts are only the bright shadows 


THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 


xm 


of the hard actualities under their feet. The chief en¬ 
gineer to whom I presented “Lord Jim” (not the beloved 
and bearded personality described above), was an inter¬ 
esting variant of this. A hard-bitten portly individual, 
an excellent officer, and well read withal, he deprecated in 
its entirety the Conradian philosophy and literary method. 
Yes, he knew the story out East, as did everybody else. 
A ship called the Jeddah, it was, which ran over a sunken 
derelict and broke her back. The officers left her. Who 
wouldn’t? A million chances to one against her lasting 
ten minutes. Conrad had idealized the mate Jim, that 
was all. 

That was the word he used: “idealized.” He was a 
blunt Englishman, with his emotions planted almost 
inaccessibly deep down among his racial prejudices. He 
objected really to anybody’s discussing the fundamental 
motives of man. It was not the thing to do. Possibly 
the slight imponderable irony which almost always creeps 
into Conrad’s descriptions of seagoing engineers, was 
responsible for my friend’s irritation. Leaving out the 
worthy Solomon Rout in “Typhoon,” Conrad seems to 
have been something less than fortunate in his engineer 
types. . . . 

At the other end of the scale the present writer pre¬ 
serves a most lively memory of his introduction to 
Youth” by the third mate of a beef ship running into 
London River. An alert and cheerful college boy who 
had been through the hard gruelling of an apprenticeship 
in sail, he was at that stage of the twenties when one is 
equally interesting to the women of thirty, the men of 
forty, and the mothers of fifty. And it was he who, as 
we were passing the watch below in friendly comparison 
of books read, suddenly lighted up all over his fresh ruddy 
features and said in a glow of delicious enthusiasm, “I 
say, haven’t you read "Youth’? My word, but you must 


xiv JOSEPH CONRAD 

read ‘Youth’! It’s ripping! The finest tale I ever read 
in my life!” 

And he stuck to it in spite of anything the others 
might say. He had been caught by the extraordinary 
glamour of the thing, the superb simplicity of the narra¬ 
tive, the cumulative power of the finale. He would never 
be the same being again after reading that tale. Here 
we have an achievement for which there is no adequate 
name save genius. 

Other books there are of Conrad’s which enshrine no 
memories of a shipmate’s admiration or dislike. There 
is “Nostromo” for instance, that little-read masterpiece 
of creative literature. Ordered from London during the 
war, and read while voyaging between Port Said and 
Saloniki, this “tale of a seaboard” made the monotonous 
business of naval transport seem a dim and ridiculous 
fragment of unreality. The huge size of the canvas, 
the sweep and surge of the narrative, the sudden reveal¬ 
ing phrases, the balanced cadence of the sentences, the 
single harp notes calling to some obscure emotion of the 
soul—all these made their appeal and created an im¬ 
perishable memory. 

And there is a point it is pertinent to make here, in 
view of this new volume of “Notes on Life and Letters”: 
that it is doing Conrad a disservice to characterize him as 
“a sea writer.” One does not call Turner a sea painter. 
The highest genius does not shackle itself with such very 
trivial restrictions. Some of the finest of Conrad’s tales 
have nothing whatever to do with the sea, notably “Heart 
of Darkness,” “Under Western Eyes,” and “An Outcast 
of the Islands.” If it be not misunderstood, the present 
writer would like to say that going to sea will have had 
very little influence upon the final verdict of posterity 
upon Conrad’s work. His philosophy is his own and 
fundamentally antagonistic to the ideas of most sea- 


THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 


xv 


farers. His technical method is provoking to seamen, 
who have a very different fashion of telling a tale—as 
different in fact as the average ship master is from Charlie 
Marlow. There is, as Conrad himself remarks, nothing 
speculative in a sailor's mentality. The meaning of his 
story is on the outside. Conrad is entirely speculative. 
He tells the story almost in absence of mind. He will 
bring you right up to a moment of almost unendurable 
dramatic intensity and then devote half a dozen pages 
to depicting the psychological phenomena attendant upon 
it. We who are gathered here consider the labour justi¬ 
fied by the unique results. The red-blooded folk whose 
conception of drama is as rudimentary as the struggle 
to enter a crowded subway train, are naively infuriated 
when deprived of their precious story. There are classes 
of novel readers who will not have Conrad at any price. 
They lack patience and are not compensated by any per¬ 
fection of prose diction which may inadvertently come 
under their notice. For them the donkeyman, the car¬ 
penter, and storekeeper, mentioned earlier in this essay, 
were simply taciturn nonentities. For us they are a bi¬ 
zarre trinity of lonely souls floating in mysterious prox¬ 
imity through a universe of ironical destinies. For us 
they are the indistinct shadows of men like Axel Heyst, 
Captain MacWhirr, and Falk. 

The present writer feels a special debt of gratitude for 
these “Notes on Life and Letters'’ since they include a 
number of fugitive pieces, occasional contributions to 
reviews, which he missed at the time, owing to being in 
some distant harbour. There is the very indignant di¬ 
gression, for example, upon the loss of the Titanic . And 
it is worthy of note that when he deigns to speak of his 
contemporaries, Conrad is exasperatingly unaware of the 
existence of the gods in the best-selling universe. He 
has much to say, on the contrary, of Henry James, of 


XV] 


JOSEPH CONRAD 


Dostoyevsky, and of Anatole France. These articles are 
exactly what one would expect from the author: urbane 
and dignified criticism of one artist by another. Conrad 
has been honoured similarly by H. G. Wells, whose re¬ 
view of “Almayer’s Folly” and “An Outcast of the Is¬ 
lands” was a masterpiece of critical insight. 

Yet one returns again to the Prefaces. One has here 
the feeling of being shown round the studio by the master. 
This, he seems to say, is exactly how it was done. He 
deprecates gently, and one hopes sincerely, the formidable 
accretion of legendary romanticism which has collected 
about his career. We are to believe that these people in 
his books never actually existed—they are the magnificent 
fabrications of the author’s brain. A hint here, a whis¬ 
pered conversation there, a newspaper yarn over yonder 
—and lo! fifteen years later Willems or Falk or Razumov 
or Nostromo emerges from obscurity and assumes an en¬ 
igmatic attitude of having existed since the dawn of time. 
This will be very disappointing to those prosaic enthu¬ 
siasts who like to hear that all great characters in fiction 
have their originals in history. And the present writer 
must confess he had weakly imagined that “The Secret 
Agent” was the happy result of a long-past familiarity 
with the strange folk who hang around legations and live 
in disreputable lodgings off Greek Street or the Vaux- 
hall Bridge Road. 

And yet of what avail are these prying speculations? 
There seems still to survive in us much of that ghoulish 
predilection of the Middle Ages for relics. We will go 
to a museum to look with veneration upon the authentic 
trinkets of the illustrious dead. So in these “Notes on 
My Books” one must resist the temptation to linger over 
the personal revelations with vulgar curiosity. They are 
for our information and comfort, but they hold no ano¬ 
dyne for pain or elixir of youth whereby we may regain 


THE ARTIST PHILOSOPHER 


xvn 


our lost illusions. They must in no case divert our at¬ 
tention from one preface in particular—a preface set 
apart by virtue of its history and intention. It would 
be much more just to call it the confession of faith of a 
supreme master of prose. The present writer is unable 
to speak of it without emotion.. It enshrines in resonant 
and perfect phrases the secret convictions of his heart. 
It is the crowning gift of a great artist; and when one 
pauses to condense in a few words an adequate compre¬ 
hension of that artist’s work, one turns instinctively to 
this long-suppressed preface to “The Nigger of the Nar¬ 
cissus.” As one reads, one recalls. The literary art, 
he says, 

. . . must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to 

the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music, 
which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete un¬ 
swerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and sub¬ 
stance ; it is only through an unremitting, never-discouraged 
care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can 
be made to plasticity, to colour and that the light of magic 
suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant 
over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, 
worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage. 


And again, of the writer: 

He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the 
sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, 
and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with 
all creation—and to the subtle but invincible conviction of sol¬ 
idarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, 
to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in 
illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which 
binds together all humanity—the dead to the living and the living 
to the unborn. 

So he sums it up. Beyond this, in placing the bounds 
of the author’s art, it is impossible to go. One is per¬ 
mitted only to add, for the purpose of supplying a fit¬ 
ting conclusion, the final paragraph. The humble and 
industrious among us may smile incredulously, yet toil 


xviii JOSEPH CONRAD 

on with a better heart, when they read that our aim should 
be 


. . . to arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about 

the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight 
of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision 
of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them 
pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile—such is the aim, dif¬ 
ficult and evanescent and reserved only for a very few to achieve. 
But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate even that 
task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished— behold !— 
all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile 
—and the return to an eternal rest 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


When this novel first appeared in book form a notion 
got about that I had been bolted away with. Some re¬ 
viewers maintained that the work starting as a short story 
had got beyond the writer’s control. One or two discov¬ 
ered internal evidence of the fact which seemed to amuse 
them. They pointed out the limitations of the narrative 
form. They argued that no man could have been ex¬ 
pected to talk all that time, and other men to listen so long. 
It was not, they said, very credible. 

After thinking it over for something like sixteen years 
I am not so sure about that. Men have been known, both 
in the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the 
night ‘"swapping yarns.” This, however, is but one yarn, 
yet with interruptions affording some measure of relief; 
and in regard to the listener’s endurance, the postulate 
must be accepted that the story was interesting. It is 
the necessary preliminary assumption. If I hadn’t be¬ 
lieved that it was interesting I could never have begun to 
write it. As to the mere physical possibility we all know 
that some speeches in Parliament have taken nearer six 
than three hours in delivery; whereas all that part of the 
book which is Marlow’s narrative can be read through 
aloud, I should say, in less than three hours. Besides— 
though I have kept strictly all such insignificant details 
out of the tale—we may presume that there must have been 
refreshments on that night, a glass of mineral water of 
some sort to help the narrator on. 

But, seriously, the truth of the matter is, that my first 


xix 


XX 


AUTHOR S NOTE 


thought was of a short story, concerned only with the pil¬ 
grim ship episode; nothing more. And that was a legiti¬ 
mate conception. After writing a few pages, however, I 
became for some reason discontented and I laid them aside 
for a time. I didn’t take them out of the drawer till the 
late Mr. William Blackwood suggested I should give 
something again to his magazine. 

It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrim ship 
episode was a good starting-point for a free and wandering 
tale; that it was an event, too, which could conceivably 
colour the whole “sentiment of existence” in a simple and 
sensitive character. But all these preliminary moods 
and stirrings of spirit were rather obscure at the time, and 
they do not appear clearer to me now after the lapse of so 
many years. 

The few pages I had laid aside were not without their 
weight in the choice of subject. But the whole was re¬ 
written deliberately. When I sat down to it I knew it 
would be a long book, though I didn’t foresee that it would 
spread itself over thirteen numbers of “Maga.” 

I have been asked at times whether this was not the 
book of mine I liked best. I am a great foe to favouritism 
in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate rela¬ 
tionship of an author to his works. As a matter of prin¬ 
ciple I will have no favourites; but I don’t go so far as to 
feel grieved and annoyed by the preference some people give 
to my Lord Jim. I won’t even say that I “fail to under¬ 
stand. . . .” No! But once I had occasion to be 

puzzled and surprised. 

A friend of mine returning from Italy had talked with a 
lady there who did not like the book. I regretted that, of 
course, but what surprised me was the ground of her dis¬ 
like. “You know,” she said, “it is all so morbid.” 

The pronouncement gave me food for an hour’s anxious 


AUTHOR S NOTE 


XXL 


thought. Finally I arrived at the conclusion that, making 
due allowances for the subject itself being rather foreign 
to women’s normal sensibilities, the lady could not have 
been an Italian. I wonder whether she was European at 
all? In any case, no Latin temperament would have per¬ 
ceived anything morbid in the acute consciousness of 
lost honour. Such a consciousness may be wrong, or it 
may be right, or it may be condemned as artificial; and, 
perhaps, my Jim is not a type of wide commonness. But 
I can safely assure my readers that he is not the product 
of coldly perverted thinking. He’s not a figure of North¬ 
ern Mists either. One sunny morning, in the common¬ 
place surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, I saw his 
form pass by—appealing—significant—under a cloud— 
perfectly silent. Which is as it should be. It was for 
me, with all the sympathy of which I was capable, to seek 
fit words for his meaning. He was “one of us.” 


June, 1917. 


J. C. 





LORD JIM 


CHAPTER I 

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully 
built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop 
of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under 
stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice 
was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged 
self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It 
seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much 
at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, 
apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in 
the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship- 
chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular. 

A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything 
under the sun, but he must have Ability in the abstract 
and demonstrate it practically. His work consists in 
racing under sail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks 
for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, 
forcing upon him a card — the business card of the ship- 
chandler— and on his first visit on shore piloting him 
firmly but without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop 
which is full of things that are eaten and drunk on board 
ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthy 
and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a 
book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where 
her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler 

1 


2 


LORD JIM 


he has never seen before. There is a cool parlour, easy- 
chairs, bottles, cigars, writing implements, a copy of har¬ 
bour regulations, and a warmth of welcome that melts the 
salt of a three months’ passage out of a seaman’s heart. 
The connection thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship 
remains in harbour, by the daily visits of the water-clerk. 
To the captain he is faithful like a friend and attentive 
like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfish devotion 
of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Later 
on the bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane occu¬ 
pation. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a 
water-clerk who possesses Ability in the abstract has also 
the advantage of having been brought up to the sea, he is 
worth to his employer a lot of money and some humouring. 
Jim had always good wages and as much humouring as 
would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, 
with black ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly 
and depart. To his employers the reasons he gave were 
obviously inadequate. They said “ Confounded fool! ” as 
soon as his back was turned. This was their criticism on 
his exquisite sensibility. 

To the white men in the waterside business and to the 
captains of ships he was just Jim — nothing more. He 
had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that it 
should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had as 
many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality 
but a fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he 
would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to be 
at the time and go to another — generally farther east. 
He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from 
the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for 
no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in 
good order towards the rising sum and the fact followed 


LORD JIM 


3 


him casually but inevitably. Thus in the course of years 
he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Ran¬ 
goon, in Penang, in Batavia — and in each of these halting- 
places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his 
keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for 
good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin 
forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had 
elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to 
the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan 
Jim: as one might say — Lord Jim. 

Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders 
of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and 
peace. Jim’s father possessed such certain knowledge of 
the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people 
in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those 
whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. 
The little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a 
rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. It had stood 
there for centuries, but the trees around probably remem¬ 
bered the laying of the first stone. Below, the red front 
of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of 
grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir trees, with an orchard at the 
back, a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass 
of greenhouses tacked along a wall of bricks. The living 
had belonged to the family for generations but Jim was 
one of five sons, and when after a course of light holiday 
literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, he 
was sent at once to a “ training-ship for officers of the 
mercantile marine.” 

He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross 
topgallant yards. He was generally liked. He had the 
third place in navigation and pulled stroke in the first 
cutter. Having a steady head with an excellent physique, 


4 


LORD JIM 


he was very smart aloft. His station was in the foretop^ 
and often from there he looked down, with the contempt 
of a man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the 
peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the brown tide 
of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of the sur¬ 
rounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular 
against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belch¬ 
ing out smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships 
departing, the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, 
the little boats floating far below his feet, with the hazy 
splendour of the sea in the distance, and the hope of a 
stirring life in the world of adventure. 

On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices 
he would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind 
the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving peo¬ 
ple from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, 
swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely casta¬ 
way, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs 
in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted 
savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high 
seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts 
of despairing men — always an example of devotion to duty, 
and as unflinching as a hero in a book. 

“ Something’s up. Come along.” 

He leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the 
ladders. Above could be heard a great scurrying about and 
shouting, and when he got through the hatchway he stood 
still — as if confounded. 

It was the dusk of a winter’s day. The gale had fresh¬ 
ened since noon, stopping the traffic on the river, and now 
blew with the strength of a hurricane in fitful bursts that 
boomed like salvoes of great guns firing over the ocean. 
The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided, and 


LORD JIM 


5 


between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the turn 
bling tide, the small craft jumbled and tossing along the 
shore, the motionless buildings in the driving mist, the broad 
ferry-boats pitching ponderously at anchor, the vast landing- 
stages heaving up and down and smothered in sprays. The 
next gust seemed to blow all this away. The air was full 
of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a 
furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal 
tumult of earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and 
made him hold his breath in awe. He stood still. It 
seemed to him he was whirled around. 

He was jostled. " Man the cutter! ” Boys rushed past 
him. A coaster running in for shelter had crashed through 
a schooner at anchor, and one of the ship’s instructors had 
seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, 
clustered round the davits. “ Collision. Just ahead of us. 
Mr. Symons saw it.” A push made him stagger against 
the mizzenmast, and he caught hold of a rope. The old 
training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, 
bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging 
humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth 
at sea. “ Lower away! ” He saw the boat, manned, drop 
swiftly below the rail, a^d rushed after her. He heard a 
splash. “ Let go; clear the falls ! ” He leaned over. The 
river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter could 
be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and 
wind, that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast 
of the ship. A yelling voice in her reached him faintly: 
“ Keep stroke, you young whelps, if you want to save any¬ 
body ! Keep stroke! ” And suddenly she lifted high her 
bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke the 
spell cast upon her by the wind and tide. 

Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. “ Too late, young, 


LORD JIM 


6 

ster.” The captain of the ship laid a restraining hand on 
that boy, who seemed on the point of leaping overboard, 
and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious defeat in his 
eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically. “ Better luck 
next time. This will teach you to be smart.” 

A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing 
back half full of water, and with two exhausted men 
washing about on her bottom boards. The tumult and 
the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contempt¬ 
ible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their 
inefficient menace. Now he knew what to think of it. 
It seemed to him he cared nothing for the gale. He 
could affront greater perils. He would do so — better 
than anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Never¬ 
theless he brooded apart that evening while the bow-man 
of the cutter — a boy with a face like a girl’s and big 
grey eyes — was the hero of the lower deck. Eager ques¬ 
tioners crowded round him. He narrated : “ I just saw 
his head bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the 
water. It caught in his breeches and I nearly went over¬ 
board, as I thought I would, only old Symons let go the 
tiller and grabbed my legs — the boat nearly swamped. 
Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don’t mind a bit him 
being grumpy with us. He swore at me all the time he 
held my leg, but that was only his way of telling me to 
stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully excitable 
— isn’t he? No — not the little fair chap — the other, 
the big one with a beard. When we pulled him in he 
groaned, ‘ Oh, my leg! oh, my leg! ’ and turned up his 
eyes. Fancy such a big chap fainting like a girl. Would 
any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook ? I 
wouldn’t. It went into his leg so far.” He showed the 
boat-hook, which he had carried below for the purpose, 


LORD JIM 


T 


and produced a sensation. “No, silly! It was not his 
flesh that held him — his breeches did. Lots of blood, 
of course.” 

Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale 
had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pre¬ 
tence of terror. He felt angry with the brutal tumult 
of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking 
unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Other¬ 
wise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, 
since a lower achievement had served the turn. He had 
enlarged his knowledge more than those who had done 
the work. When all men flinched, then — he felt sure — 
he alone would know how to deal with the spurious men¬ 
ace of wind and seas. He knew what to think of it. 
Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible. He could 
detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect 
of a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from 
the noisy crowd of boys, he exulted with fresh certitude 
in his avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided 
courage. 


CHAPTER II 

After two years of training he went to sea, and enter¬ 
ing the regions so well known to his imagination, found 
them strangely barren of adventure. He made many voy¬ 
ages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between 
sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the 
exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily 
task that gives bread — but whose only reward is in the 
perfect love of the work. This reward eluded him. Yet 
he could not go back, because there is nothing more 



$ 


LORD JIM 


enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at 
sea. Besides, his prospects were good. He was gentle¬ 
manly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of 
his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became 
chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested 
by those events of the sea that show in the light of day 
the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the 
fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance 
and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others 
but also to himself. 

Only once in all that time he had again the glimpse of 
the earnestness in the anger of the sea. That truth is not 
so often made apparent as people might think. There are 
many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it 
is only now and then that there appears on the face of 
facts a sinister violence of intention — that indefinable 
something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a 
man that this complication of accidents or these elemental 
furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a 
strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that 
means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of 
his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, 
to destroy, to annihilate all he had seen, known, loved, 
enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary, — 
the sunshine, the memories, the future, — which means to 
sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his 
sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. 

Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a 
week of which his Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 
“ Man ! it’s a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through 
it! ” spent many days stretched on his back, dazed, 
battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of 
an abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would 


LORD JIM 


0 


be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. 
The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness 
of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagi¬ 
nation, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstim- 
ulated, sinks to rest in the dulness of exhausted emotion. 
Jim saw nothing but the disorder of his tossed cabin. He 
lay there battened down in the midst of a small devastation, 
and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck. But now 
and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip 
him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, 
and then the unintelligent brutality of an existence liable 
to the agony of such sensations filled him with a despairing 
desire to escape at any cost. Then fine weather returned, 
and he thought no more about it. 

His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship 
arrived at an Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. 
His recovery was slow, and he was left behind. 

There were only two other patients in the white men’s 
ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg 
falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor 
from a neighbouring province afflicted by some mysterious 
tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and 
indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which 
his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied 
devotion. They told each other the story of their lives, 
played cards a little, or, yawning and in pyjamas, lounged 
through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word. 
The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering 
through the windows, always flung wide open, brought 
into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of 
the earth, the bewitching breath of the Eastern waters. 
There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, 
the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over 


10 


LORD JIM 


the thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, ove> 
the fronds of palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead 
which is a thoroughfare to the East, — at the roadstead 
dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine, its 
ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday 
pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky over¬ 
head and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing 
the space as far as the horizon. 

Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended 
into the town to look for some opportunity to get home. 
Nothing offered just then, and, while waiting, he associated 
naturally with the men of his calling in the port. These 
were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but 
seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced 
energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of 
dreamers. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, 
hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the 
dark places of the sea; and their death was the only event 
of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasona¬ 
ble certitude of achievement. The majority were men who 
like himself, thrown there by some accident, had remained 
as officers of country ships. They had now a horror of the 
home service, with its harder conditions, severer view of 
duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They were attuned 
to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They loved 
short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, an 
the distinction of being white. They shuddered at the 
thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, 
always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of 
engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs, half-castes — would 
have served the devil himself had he made it easy enough. 
They talked everlastingly of turns of luck • how So-and-so 
got charge of a boat on the coast of China — a soft thing; 


LORD JIM 


11 


how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and 
that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all 
they said — in their actions, in their looks, in their persons 
— could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the 
determination to lounge safely through existence. 

To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed 
at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at 
length he found a fascination in the sight of those men, in 
their appearance of doing so well on such a small allow¬ 
ance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original 
disdain, there grew up slowly another sentiment; and sud¬ 
denly, giving up the idea of going home, he took a berth as 
chief mate of the Patna. 

The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean 
like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a 
condemned water-tank. She was owned by a Chinaman, 
chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of rene¬ 
gade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse 
publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the 
strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all 
those he was not afraid of, and wore a u blood-and-iron ” 
air, combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. 
After she had been painted outside and whitewashed in¬ 
side, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven 
r on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a 
wooden jetty. 

They streamed aboard over three gangways, they 
streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, 
they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of 
bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and 
when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the 
deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning 
hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship — like water 


12 


LORD JIM 


filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and cra» 
nies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Eight 
hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affec¬ 
tions and memories, they had collected there, coming from 
north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after 
treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in 
praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from 
island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange 
sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They 
came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous 
campongs, from villages by the sea. At the call of an idea 
they had left their forests, their clearings, the protection of 
their rulers, their prosperity, their poverty, the surround¬ 
ings of their youth and the graves of their fathers. They 
came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags 
*—the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean 
old men pressing forward without hope of return; young 
boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls 
with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and 
clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled 
head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims 
of an exacting belief. 

“Look at dese cattle,” said the German skipper to his 
new chief mate. 

An Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. He 
walked slowly aboard, handsome and grave in his white 
gown and large turban. A string of servants followed, 
loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and backed 
away from the wharf. 

She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely 
the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a 
circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge 
•f foaming reefs. The Arab* standing up aft, recited aloud 


LORD JIM 


13 


the prayer of travellers by sea. He invoked the favour of 
the Most High upon that journey, implored His blessing on 
men’s toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the 
steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; 
and far astern of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, 
planted by unbelievers on a treacherous shoal, seemed to 
wink at her its eye of flame, as if in derision of her errand 
of faith. 

She cleared the Straits, crossed the bay, continued on 
her way through, the “ One-degree ” passage. She held on 
straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky 
scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine 
that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all 
impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister 
splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained 
still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle — 
viscous, stagnant, dead. The Patna , with a slight hiss, 
X>assed over that plain luminous and smooth, unrolled a 
black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on 
the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, 
like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by 
the phantom of a steamer. 

Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolu¬ 
tions with the progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a 
silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of 
the ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concen¬ 
trated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the men, 
glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the 
sea evening after evening, preserving the same distance 
ahead of her advancing bows. The five whites on board 
lived amidships, isolated from the human cargo. The awn¬ 
ings covered the deck with a white roof from stem to stern, 
and a faint hum. a low murmur of sad voices, alone revealed 


14 


LORD JIM 


the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the 
ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing 
one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever 
open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a 
wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smoul¬ 
dering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame 
flicked at her from a heaven without pity. 

The nights descended on her like a benediction. 


CHAPTER III 

A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the 
stars, together with the serenity of their rays, seemed to 
shed upon the earth the assurance of everlasting security, 
The young moon, recurved, and shining low in the west, 
was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, 
and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a 
sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle 
of a dark horizon. The propeller turned without ,a check, 
as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe 
universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of 
water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, 
enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few 
white swirls of foam bursting in a low hiss, a few wavelets, 
a few ripples, a few undulations that, left behind, agitated 
the surface of the sea for an instant after the passage of 
the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last 
into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black 
speck of the moving hull remaining everlastingly in its 
centre. 

Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certi¬ 
tude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read 



LORD JIM 


15 


on the silent aspect of nature like the certitude of foster¬ 
ing love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s face. 
Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to the wisdom of 
white men and to their courage, trusting the power of 
their unbelief and the iron shell of their fire-ship, the 
pilgrims of an exacting faith slept on mats, on blankets, 
on bare planks, on every deck, in all the dark corners, 
wrapped in dyed cloths, muffled in soiled rags, with their 
heads resting on small bundles, with their faces pressed 
to bent forearms: the men, the women, the children; the 
old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty — all 
equal before sleep, death’s brother. 

A draught of air, fanned from forward by the speed of 
the ship, passed steadily through the long gloom between 
the high bulwarks, swept over the rows of prone bodies; 
a few dim flames in globe-lamps were hung short here and 
there under the ridge-poles, and in the blurred circles of 
light thrown down and trembling slightly to the unceas¬ 
ing vibration of the ship appeared a chin upturned, two 
closed eyelids, a dark hand with silver rings, a meagre 
limb draped in a torn covering, a head bent back, a naked 
foot, a throat bared and stretched as if offering itself to 
the knife. The well-to-do had made for their families 
shelters with heavy boxes and dusty mats; the poor 
reposed side by side with all they had on earth tied up 
in a rag under their heads; the lone old men slept, with 
drawn-up legs, upon their prayer-carpets, with their hands 
over their ears and one elbow on each side of the face: 
a fatht r, his shoulders up and his knees under his fore¬ 
head, dozed dejectedly by a boy who slept on his back 
with tousled hair and one arm commandingly extended; 
a woman covered from head to foot, like a corpse, with 
a piece of white sheeting, had a naked child in the hoi 


16 


LORD JIM 


low of each arm; the Arab’s belongings, piled right aft, 
made a heavy mound of broken outlines, with a cargo- 
lamp swung above, and a great confusion of vague forms 
behind: gleams of paunchy brass pots, the foot-rest of a 
deck-chair, blades of spears, the straight scabbard of an 
old sword leaning against a heap of pillows, the spout 
of a tin coffee-pot. The patent log on the taffrail peri¬ 
odically rang a single tinkling stroke for every mile trav¬ 
ersed on an errand of faith. Above the mass of sleepers 
a faint and patient sigh at times floated, the exhalation 
if a troubled dream; and short metallic clangs bursting 
out suddenly in the depths of the ship, the harsh scrape 
of a shovel, the violent slam of a furnace-door, exploded 
brutally, as if the men handling the mysterious things 
below had their breasts full of fierce anger: while the 
slim high hull of the steamer went on evenly ahead, with¬ 
out a sway of her bare masts, cleaving continuously the 
great calm of the waters under the inaccessible serenity 
of the sky. 

Jim paced athwart, and his footsteps in the vast silence 
were loud to his own ears, as if echoed by the watchful 
stars: his eyes, roaming about the line of the horizon, 
seemed to gaze hungrily into the unattainable, and did not 
see the shadow of the coming event. The only shadow on 
the sea was the shadow of the black smoke pouring heavily 
from the funnel its immense streamer, whose end was con¬ 
stantly dissolving in the air. Two Malays, silent and 
almost motionless, steered, one on each side of the wheel, 
whose brass rim shone fragmentarily in the oval of light 
thrown out by the binnacle. Now and then a hand, with 
black fingers alternately letting go and catching hold of 
revolving spokes, appeared in the illumined part; the links 
of wheel-chains ground heavily in the grooves of the barrel 


LORD JIM 


17 


Jim would glance at the compass, would glan te around the 
unattainable horizon, would stretch himself till his joints 
cracked with a leisurely twist of the body in the very 
excess of wellbeing; and, as if made audacious by the in¬ 
vincible aspect of the peace, he felt he cared for nothing 
that could happen to him to the end of his days. From 
time to time he glanced idly at a chart pegged out with 
four drawing-pins on a low three-legged table abaft the 
steering-gear case. The sheet of paper portraying the 
depths of the sea presented a shiny surface under the 
light of a bull’s-eye lamp lashed to a stanchion, a surface 
as level and smooth as the glimmering surface of the waters. 
Parallel rulers with a pair of dividers reposed on it; the 
ship’s position at last noon was marked with a small black 
cross, and the straight pencil-line drawn firmly as far as 
Perim figured the course of the ship — the path of souls 
towards the holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward 
of eternal life — while the pencil with its sharp end touch¬ 
ing the Somali coast lay round and still like a naked ship’s 
spar floating in the pool of a sheltered dock. “ How steady 
she goes,” thought Jim with wonder, with something like 
gratitude for this high peace of sea and sky. At such times 
his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved 
these dreams and the success of his imaginary achieve¬ 
ments. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, 
its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm 
of vagueness, they passed before him with a heroic tread; 
they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk 
with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. 
There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased 
with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes 
ahead; and when he happened to glance back he saw the 
white streak of the wake drawn as straight by the ship’s 


18 


LORD JIM 


keel upon the sea as the black line cfrawn by the pencil 
upon the chart. 

The ash-buckets racketed, clanking up and down the 
stoke-hold ventilators, and this tin-pot clatter warned him 
the end of his watch was near. He sighed with content, 
with regret as well, at having to part from that serenity 
which fostered the adventurous freedom of his thoughts. He 
was a little sleepy too, and felt a pleasurable languor running 
through every limb as though all the blood in his body had 
turned to warm milk. His skipper had come up noiselessly, 
in pyjamas and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. 
Red of face, only half awake, the left eye partly closed, the 
right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head over 
the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There was some¬ 
thing obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. His bared 
breast glistened soft and greasy, as though he had sweated 
out his fat in his sleep. He pronounced a professional 
remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping 
sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his 
double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge 
of his jaw. Jim started, and his answer was full of defer¬ 
ence ; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for 
the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his 
memory for ever as the incarnation of everything vile and 
base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts 
we trust for our salvation, in the men that surround us, in 
the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, 
and in the air that fills our lungs. 

The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly down¬ 
wards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, 
and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down 
nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, 
with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the 


LORD JIM 


19 


half-transparent dome covering the flat disk of an opaque 
sea. The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion 
was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had 
been a crowded planet speeding through the dark spaces of 
ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm 
solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations. “ Hot is 
no name for it down below/’ said a voice. 

Jim smiled without looking round. The skipper pre 
sented an unmoved breadth of back: it was the renegade’s 
trick to appear pointedly unaware of your existence unless 
it suited his purpose to turn at you with a devouring glare 
before he let loose a torrent of foamy, abusive jargon that 
came like a gush from a sewer. Now he emitted only a 
sulky grunt; the second engineer at the head of the bridge- 
ladder, kneading with damp palms a dirty sweat-rag, un¬ 
abashed, continued the tale of his complaints. The sailors 
had a good time of it up here, and what was the use of them 
in the world he would be blowed if he could see. The poor 
devils of engineers had to get the ship along anyhow, and 

they could very well do the rest too; by gosh they- 

“ Shut up ! ” growled the German, stolidly. “ Oh yes ! Shut 
up — and when anything goes wrong you fly to us, don’t 
you ? ” went on the other. He was more than half cooked, 
he expected; but anyway, now, he did not mind how much 
he sinned, because these last three days he had passed 
through a fine course of training for the place where the 
bad boys go when they die — b’gosh, he had — besides 
being made jolly well deaf by the blasted racket below. 
The durned, compound, surface-condensing, rotten scrap- 
heap rattled and banged down there like an old deck-winch, 
only more so; and what made him risk his life every night 
and day that God made amongst the refuse of a breaking- 
up yard flying round at fifty-seven revolutions, was more 


20 


LORD JIM 


than he could tell. He must have been born recklesa, 
b’gosh. He . . . “Where did you get drink?” inquired 
the German, very savage, but motionless in the light of the 
binnacle, like a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of 
fat. Jim went on smiling at the retreating horizon; his 
heart was full of generous impulses, and his thought was 
contemplating his own superiority. “ Drink! ” repeated 
the engineer with amiable scorn: he was hanging on with 
both hands to the rail, a shadowy figure with flexible legs. 
“Not from you, captain. You’re far too mean, b’gosh. 
You would let a good man die sooner than give him a drop 
of schnaps. That’s what you Germans call economy. Penny 
wise, pound foolish.” He became sentimental. The chief 
had given him a four-finger nip about ten o’clock — “ only 
one, s’elp me! ” — good old chief; but as to getting the old 
fraud out of his bunk — a five-ton crane couldn’t do it. 
Not it. Not to-night anyhow. He was sleeping sweetly 
like a little child, with a bottle of prime brandy under his 
pillow. Prom the thick throat of the commander of the 
Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word 
schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in 
a faint stir of air. He and the chief engineer had been 
cronies for a good few years — serving the same jovial, 
crafty, old Chinaman, with horn-rimmed goggles and strings 
of red silk plaited into the venerable grey hairs of his pig¬ 
tail. The quay-side opinion in the Patna’s home-port was 
that these two in the way of brazen peculation “ had done 
together pretty well everything you can think of.” Out¬ 
wardly they were badly matched: one dull-eyed, malevo. 
lent, and of soft fleshy curves; the other lean, all hollows, 
with a head long and bony like the head of an old horse, 
with sunken cheeks, with sunken temples, with an indiffer¬ 
ent glazed glance of sunken eyes. He had been stranded 


LORD JIM 


21 


out East somewhere — in Canton, in Shanghai, or perhaps ii- 
Yokohama; he probably did not care to remember himself 
the exact locality, nor yet the cause of his shipwreck. He 
had been, in mercy to his youth, kicked quietly out of his 
ship twenty years ago or more, and it might have been sc 
much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in 
it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation 
expanding in these seas, and men of his craft being scarce 
at first, he had “ got on ” after a sort. He was eager to let 
strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was “an old 
stager out here.” When he moved a skeleton seemed to 
sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, 
and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room 
skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a 
brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, 
with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system 
of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth. He was 
usually anything but free with his private store of liquor; 
but on that night he had departed from his principles, so 
that his second, a weak-headed child of Wapping, what 
with the unexpectedness of the treat and the strength of 
the .stuff, had become very happy, cheeky, and talkative. 
The fury of the New South Wales German was extreme; 
he puffed like an exhaust-pipe, and Jim, faintly amused by 
the scene, was impatient for the time when he could get 
below: the last ten minutes of the watch were irritating 
like a gun. „nat hangs fire; those men did not belong to the 
world of heroic adventure ; they weren’t bad chaps, though. 
Even the skipper himself . . . His gorge rose at the mass 
of panting flesh from which issued gurgling mutters, a 
cloudy trickle of filthy expressions ; but he was too pleasur¬ 
ably languid to dislike actively this or any other thing. 
The quality of these men did not matter; he rubbed 


22 


LORD JIM 


shoulders with them, but they could not touch him ; ho 
shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . 
Would the skipper go for the engineer ? . . The life was 

easy and he was too sure of himself—too sure of himself to 
. . . The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious 
doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider’s web. 

The second engineer was coming by easy transitions to 
the consideration of his finances and of his courage. 

“Who’s drunk? I? No, no, captain! That won’t do. 
You ought to know by this time the chief ain’t free-hearted 
enough to make a sparrow drunk, b’gosh. I’ve never been 
the worse for liquor in my life; the stuff ain’t made yet 
that would make me drunk. I could drink fire against your 
whiskey peg for peg, b’gosh. and keep as cool as a cucumber. 
If I thought I was drunk I would jump overboard — do 
away with myself, b’gosh. I would! Straight! And I 
won’t go off the bridge. Where do you expect me to take 
the air on a night like this, eh? On deck amongst that 
vermin down there? Likely — ain’t it! And I am not 
afraid of anything you can do.” 

The German lifted two heavy fists to heaven and shook 
them a little without a word. 

“ I don’t know what fear is,” pursued the engineer, with 
the enthusiasm of sincere conviction. “ I am not afraid of 
doing all the bloomin’ work in this rotten hooker, b’gosh! 
And a jolly good thing for you that there are some of us 
about the world that aren’t afraid of their lives, or where 
would you be — you and this old thing here with her plates 
like brown paper — brown paper, s’elp me ? It’s all very 
fine for you — you get a power of pieces out of her one way 
and another; but what about mo — what do I get? A 
measly hundred and fifty dollars a month and find yourself 
I wish to ask you respectfully — respectfully, mind — who 


LORD JIM 


23 


wouldn’t chuck a dratted job like this ? ’Tain’t safe, s’elp 
me, it ain’t! Only I am one of them fearless fellows . . .” 

He let go the rail and made ample gestures as if demon¬ 
strating in the air the shape and extent of his valour; his 
thin voice darted in prolonged squeaks upon the sea, he 
tiptoed back and forth for the better emphasis of utterance, 
and suddenly pitched down head-first as though he had been 
clubbed from behind. He said “ Damn! ” as he tumbled; 
an instant of silence followed upon his screeching: Jim and 
the skipper staggered forward by common accord, and catch¬ 
ing themselves up, stood very stiff and still gazing, amazed, 
at the undisturbed level of the sea. Then they looked 
upwards at the stars. 

What had happened ? The wheezy thump of the engines 
went on. Had the earth been checked in her course ? They 
could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky 
without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their im¬ 
mobility, as it poised on the brow of yawning destruction. 
The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed 
again into a vague heap. This heap said “ What’s that ? ” 
in the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as 
of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, 
hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship 
quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep 
down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the 
wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands 
remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on 
its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its 
whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled 
down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth sur¬ 
face of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of 
thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed 
across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air- 


24 


LOUD JIM 


CHAPTER IV 

A month or so afterwards, when Jim, in answer to pointed 
questions, tried to tell honestly the truth of this experience, 
he said, speaking of the ship: “ She went over whatever it 
was as easy as a snake crawling over a stick.” The illus¬ 
tration was good: the questions were aiming at facts, and 
the official Inquiry was being held in the police court of an 
Eastern port. He stood elevated in the witness-box, with 
burning cheeks, in a cool, lofty room : the big framework of 
punkahs moved gently to and fro high above his head, and 
from below many eyes were looking at him out of dark 
faces, out of white faces, out of red faces, out of faces 
attentive, spellbound, as if all these people sitting in orderly 
rows upon narrow benches had been enslaved by the fasci¬ 
nation of his voice. It was very loud, it rang startling in 
his own ears, it was the only sound audible in the world, 
for the terribly distinct questions that extorted his answers 
seemed to shape themselves in anguish and pain within his 
breast, — came to him poignant and silent like the terrible 
questioning of one’s conscience. Outside the court the sun 
blazed — within was the wind of great punkahs that made 
you shiver, the shame that made you burn, the attentive 
eyes whose glance stabbed. The face of the presiding mag¬ 
istrate, clean shaved and impassible, looked at him deadly 
pale between the red faces of the two nautical assessors. 
The light of a broad window under the ceiling fell from 
above on the heads and shoulders of the three men, and 
they were fiercely distinct in the half-light of the big 
court-room where the audience seemed composed of staring 
shadows. They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded 
facts from him. as if facts could explain anything! 


LORD JIM 


Z5 

“ After you had concluded you had collided with some¬ 
thing floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were 
ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if 
there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from 
the force of the blow ? ” asked the assessor sitting to the 
left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, 
and with both elbows on the desk clasped his rugged hands 
before his face, looking at Jim with thoughtful blue eyes; 
the other, a heavy, scornful man, thrown back in his seat, 
his left arm extended full length, drummed delicately with 
his finger-tips on a blotting-pad: in the middle the magis¬ 
trate, upright in the roomy arm-chair, his head inclined 
slightly on the shoulder, had his arms crossed on his breast, 
and a few flowers in a glass vase by the side of his inkstand. 

“ I did not,” said Jim. “I was told to call no one and 
to make no noise for fear of creating a panic. I thought 
the precaution reasonable. I took one of the lamps that 
were hung under the awnings and went forward. After 
opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. I 
lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and 
saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water 
already. I knew then there must be a big hole below the 
water-line.” He paused. 

“ Yes,” said the big assessor, with a dreamy smile at the 
blotting-pad; his fingers played incessantly, touching the 
paper without noise. 

“I did not think of danger just then. I might have 
been a little startled: all this happened in such a quiet 
way and so very suddenly. I knew there was no other 
bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating 
the forepeak from the forehold. I went back to tell the 
captain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at 
the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told 


56 


LORD JIM 


me he thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on 
the top step when getting down while I was forward. Ha 
exclaimed, ‘My God! That rotten bulkhead ’ll give way 
in a minute, and the damned thing will go down under us 
like a lump of lead.’ He pushed me away with his right 
arm and ran before me up the ladder, shouting as he 
climbed. His left arm hung by his side. I followed up 
in time to see the captain rush at him and knock him down 
fiat on his back. He did not strike him again: he stood 
bending over him and speaking angrily but quite low. I 
fancy he was asking him why the devil he didn’t go and 
stop the engines, instead of making a row about it on deck. 
I heard him say, ‘ Get up! Run, fly! ’ He swore also. 
The engineer slid down the starboard ladder and bolted 
round the skylight to the engine-room companion which 
was on the port side. He moaned as he ran. . .” 

He spoke slowly; he remembered swiftly and with 
extreme vividness; he could have reproduced like an echo 
the moaning of the engineer for the better information of 
these men who wanted facts. After his first feeling of 
revolt he had come round to the view that only a meticulous 
precision of statement would bring out the true horror 
behind the appalling face of things. The facts those men 
were so eager to know had been visible, tangible, open to 
the senses, occupying their place in space and time, requir¬ 
ing for their existence a fourteen-hundred-ton steamer and 
twenty-seven minutes by the watch; they made a whole 
that had features, shades of expression, a complicated 
aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something 
else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdi¬ 
tion that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detes- 
table body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had 
not been a. common affair, everything in it had been of th« 


LORD JIM 


27 


utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered every¬ 
thing. He wanted to go on talking for truth’s sake, per¬ 
haps for his own sake also; and while his utterance was 
deliberate, his mind positively flew round and round the 
serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him to 
cut him off from the rest of his kind: it was like a creature 
that, finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high 
stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, 
trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some 
opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape. 
This awful activity of mind made him hesitate at times in 
his speech. . . . 

“The captain kept on moving here and there on the 
bridge; he seemed calm enough, only he stumbled several 
times; and once as I stood speaking to him he walked right 
into me as though he had been stone-blind. He made no 
definite answer to what I had to tell. He mumbled to him¬ 
self ; all I heard of it were a few words that sounded like 
'• confounded steam ! ’ and ‘ infernal steam! ’ — something 
about steam. I thought ...” 

He was becoming irrelevant; a question to the point cut 
short his speech, like a pang of pain, and he felt extremely 
discouraged and weary. He was coming to that, he was 
coming to that — and now, checked brutally, he had to 
answer by yes or no. He answered truthfully by a curt 
“ Yes, I did ”; and fair of face, big of frame, with young, 
gloomy eyes, he held his shoulders upright above the box, 
while his soul writhed within him. He was made to answer 
another question so much to the point and so useless, then 
waited again. His mouth was tastelessly dry, as though 
he had been eating dust, then salt and bitter as after a drink 
of searwater. He wiped his damp forehead, passed his 
tongue over parched lips, felt a shiver run down his back. 


28 


LORD JIM 


The big assessor had dropped his eyelids, and drummed on 
without a sound, careless and mournful; the eyes of the 
other above the sunburnt, clasped fingers seemed to glow 
with kindliness; the magistrate had swayed forward; his 
pale face hovered near the flowers, and then dropping side¬ 
ways over the arm of his chair, he rested his temple in the 
palm of his hand. The wind of the punkahs eddied down 
on the heads, on the dark-faced natives wound about in 
voluminous draperies, on the Europeans sitting together 
very hot, and in drill suits that seemed to fit them as close 
as their skins, and holding their round pith hats on their 
knees; while gliding along the walls the court peons, but¬ 
toned tight in long white coats, flitted rapidly to and fro, 
running on bare toes, red-sashed, red turban on head, as 
noiseless as ghosts, and on the alert like so many retrievers 
Jim’s eyes, wandering in the intervals of his answers, 
rested upon a white man who sat apart from the others, 
with his face worn and clouded, but with quiet eyes that 
glanced straight, interested, and clear. Jim answered 
another question, and was tempted to cry out, “What’s 
the good of this, what’s the good! ” He tapped with his 
foot slightly, bit his lip, and looked away over the heads. 
He met the eyes of the white man. The glance directed 
at him was not the fascinated stare of the others. It was 
an act of intelligent volition. Jim between two questions 
forgot himself so far as to find leisure for a thought. This 
fellow — ran the thought — looks at me as though he could 
see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had 
come across that man before — in the street perhaps. He 
was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for 
many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, 
incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a pri» 
oner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness 


LORD JIM 


29 


At present he was answering questions that did not matter 
though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether he 
would ever again speak out as long as he lived. The sound 
of his own truthful statements confirmed his deliberate 
opinion that speech was of no use to him any longer. That 
man there seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty. 
Jim looked at him, then turned away resolutely, as after a 
final parting. 

And later on, many times, in distant parts of the 
world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, 
to remember him at length, in detail and audibly. 

Perhaps it would be after dinner, on a verandah draped 
fn motionless foliage and crowned with flowers, in the 
deep dusk speckled by fiery cigar-ends. The elongated 
bulk of each cane-chair harboured a silent listener. Now 
and then a small red glow would move abruptly, and 
expanding, light up the fingers of a languid hand, part 
of a face in profound repose, or flash a crimson gleam 
into a pair of pensive eyes overshadowed by a fragment 
of an unruffled forehead: and with the very first word 
uttered, Marlow’s body, extended at rest in the seat, 
would become very still, as though his spirit had winged 
its way back into the lapse of time and were speaking 
through his lips from the past. 


CHAPTER V 

“ Oh, yes. I attended the inquiry,” he would say, “ and 
to this day I haven’t left off wondering why I went. I 
am willing to believe each of us has a guardian angel, 
if you fellows will concede to me that each of us has 
a familiar devil as well. I want you to own up, because 



so 


LORD JIM 


I don’t like to feel exceptional in any way, and I know 
I have him — the devil, I mean. I haven’t seen him, of 
course, but I go upon circumstantial evidence. He is 
there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in 
for that kind of thing. What kind of thing, you ask? 
Why, the inquiry thing, the yellow-dog thing — you 
wouldn’t think a ' mangy, native tyke would be allowed 
fco trip up people in the verandah of a magistrate’s court, 
would you? — the kind of thing that by devious, unex¬ 
pected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against 
men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague 
spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight 
of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, 
I had no confidences to make to myself, as though—God 
help m^! — I didn’t have enough confidential information 
about myself to harrow my own soul till the end of 
my appointed time. And what I have done to be thus 
favoured I want to kuow. I declare I am as full of my 
own concerns as the next man, and I have as much mem¬ 
ory as the average pilgrim in t’ is valley, so you see I 
am not particularly fit to be a receptacle of confessions. 
Then why? Can’t tell — unless it be to make time pass 
away after dinner. Charley, my dear chap, your dinner 
was extremely good, and in consequence these men here 
look upon a quiet rubber as a tumultuous occupation. 
They wallow in your good chairs and think to themselves, 
‘Hang exertion. Let that Marlow talk.’ 

“ Talk! So be it. And it’s easy enough to talk of Master 
Jim, after a good spread, two hundred feet above the sea- 
level, with a box of decent cigars handy, on a blessed even¬ 
ing of freshness and starlight that would make the best of 
us forget we are only on sufferance here and got to pick our 
way in cross lights, watching every precious minute and 


LORD JIM 


31 


every irremediable step, trusting we shall manage yet to go 
out decently in the end — but not so sure of it after all — 
and with dashed little help to expect from those we touch 
elbows with right and left. Of course there are men here 
and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner 
hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened 
by some fable of strife to be forgotten before the end is told 
-— before the end is told — even if there happens to be any 
end to it. 

“ My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You 
must know that everybody connected in any way with the 
sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, 
ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden 
to start us all cackling. I say mysterious, because it was so 
in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about as naked 
and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked 
of nothing else. First} thing in the morning as I was dress¬ 
ing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead 
my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the stew¬ 
ard, while he drank a cujy of tea, by favour, in the pantry. 
No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and 
the first remark would be, ‘ Did you ever hear of anything 
to beat this ? ’ and according to his kind the man would 
smile cynically, or look sad, or let out a swear or two. Com¬ 
plete strangers would accost each other familiarly, just for 
the sake of easing their minds on the subject: every con¬ 
founded loafer in the town came in for a harvest of drinks 
over this affair: you heard of it in the harbour office, at 
every shipbroker’s, at your agent’s, from whites, from 
natives, from half-castes, from the very boatmen squatting 
half-naked on the stone steps as you went up — by Jove! 
There was some indignation, not a few jokes, and no end of 
discussions as to what had become of them, you know 


32 


LORD JIM 


This went on for a couple of weeks or more, and the opin- 
ion that whatever was mysterious in this affair would turn 
out to be tragic as well, began to prevail, when one fine 
morning, as I was standing in the shade by the steps of the 
harbour office, I perceived four men walking towards me 
along the quay. I wondered for a while where that queer 
lot had sprung from, and suddenly, I may say, I shouted to 
myself, ‘ Here they are! ’ 

“ There they were, sure enough, three of them as large as 
life, and one much larger of girth than any living man has a 
right to be, just landed with a good breakfast inside of them 
from an outward bound Dale Line steamer that had come in 
about an hour after sunrise. There could be no mistake; I 
spotted the jolly skipper of the Patna at the first glance: 
the fattest man in the whole blessed tropical belt clear 
round that good old earth of ours. Moreover, nine months 
or so before, I had come across him in Samarang. His 
steamer was loading in the Roads, and he was abusing the 
tyrannical institutions of the German empire, and soaking 
himself in beer all day long and day after day in De Jongh’s 
back-shop, till De Jongh, who charged a guilder for every 
bottle without as much as the quiver of an eyelid, would 
beckon me aside, and, with his little leathery face all puck¬ 
ered up, declare confidentially, 1 Business is business, but 
this man, captain, he make me very sick. Tfui ! 7 

“ I was looking at him from the shade. He was hurry¬ 
ing on a little in advance, and the sunlight beating on him 
brought out his bulk in a startling way. He made me think 
of a trained baby elephant walking on hind legs. He was 
extravagantly gorgeous too — got up in a soiled sleeping 
suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a 
pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and some* 
body’s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small 


LORD JIM 


33 


for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his 
big head. You understand a man like that hasn’t the ghost 
of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes. Very well. 
On he came in hot haste, without a look right or left, passed 
within three feet of me, and in the innocence of his heart 
went on pelting upstairs into the harbour office to make his 
deposition, or report, or whatever you like to call it. 

“ It appears he addressed himself in the first instance to 
the principal shipping-master. Archie Ruthvel had just 
come in, and, as his story goes, was about to begin his 
arduous day by giving a dressing-down to his chief clerk. 
Some of you might have known him — an obliging little 
Portuguese half-caste with a miserably skinny neck, and 
always on the hop to get something from the shipmasters 
in the way of eatables — a piece of salt pork, a bag of bis¬ 
cuits, a few potatoes, or what not. One voyage, I recollect, 
I tipped him a live sheep out of the remnant of my sea- 
stock : not that I wanted him to do anything for me — he 
couldn’t, you know — but because his childlike belief in the 
sacred right to perquisites quite touched my heart. It was 
so strong as to be almost beautiful. The race — the two 
races rather — and the climate . . . However, never mind. 
I know where I have a friend for life. 

“Well, Ruthvel says he was giving him a severe lecture 
— on official morality, I suppose — when he heard a kind of 
subdued commotion at his back, and turning his head he 
saw, in his own words, something round and enormous, re¬ 
sembling a sixteen-hundred-weight sugar hogshead wrapped 
in striped flannelette, up-ended in the middle of the large 
floor space in the office. He declares he was so taken 
aback that for quite an appreciable time he did not realise 
the thing was alive, and sat still wondering for what pur¬ 
pose and by what means that object had been transported 


34 


LOED JIM 


in front of his desk. The archway from the anteroom wa8 
crowded with punkah-pullers, sweepers, police peons, the 
coxswain and crew of the harbour steam-launch, all craning 
their necks and almost climbing on each other’s backs. 
Quite a riot. By that time the fellow had managed to tug 
and jerk his hat clear of his head, and advanced with slight 
bows at Euthvel, who told me the sight was so discompos¬ 
ing that for some time he listened, quite unable to make 
out what that apparition wanted. It spoke in a voice harsh 
and lugubrious but intrepid, and little by little it dawned 
upon Archie that this was a development of the Patna case. 
He says that as soon as he understood who it was before 
him he felt quite unwell, — Archie is so sympathetic and 
easily upset, — but pulled himself together and shouted 
4 Stop! I can’t listen to you. You must go to the Master 
Attendant. I can’t possibly listen to you. Captain Elliot 
is the man you want to see. This way, this way.’ He 
jumped up, ran round that long counter, pulled, shoved: 
the other let him, surprised but obedient at first, and only 
at the door of the private office some sort of animal instinct 
made him hang back and snort like a frightened bullock. 
‘ Look here! what’s up ? Let go! Look here ! ’ Archie 
flung open the door without knocking. i The master of the 
Patna , sir,’ he shouts. ‘ Go in, captain.’ He saw the old 
man lift his head from some writing so sharp that his nose- 
nippers fell off, banged the door to, and fled to his desk, 
where he had some papers waiting for his signature: but 
he says the row that burst out in there was so awful that 
he couldn’t collect his senses sufficiently to remember the 
spelling of his own name. Archie’s the most sensitive 
shipping-master in the two hemispheres. He declares he 
felt as though he had thrown a man to a hungry lion. No 
doubt the noise was great. I heard it down below, and I 


LORD JIM 


35 


have every reason to believe it was heard clear across the 
Esplanade as far as the band-stand. Old father Elliot had 
a great stock of words and could shout — and didn’t mind 
who he shouted at either. He would have shouted at the 
Viceroy himself. As he used to tell me: ‘ I am as high as 
I can get; my pension is safe. I’ve a few pounds laid by, 
and if they don’t like my notions of duty, I would just as 
soon go home as not. I am an old man, and I have always 
spoken my mind. All I care for now is to see my girls 
married before I die.’ He was a little crazy on that point. 
His three daughters were awfully nice, though they re¬ 
sembled him amazingly, and on the mornings he woke up 
with a gloomy view of their matrimonial prospects the 
office would read it in his eye and tremble, because, they 
said, he was sure to have somebody for breakfast. How¬ 
ever, that morning he did not eat the renegade, but, if I 
may be allowed to carry on the metaphor, chewed him up 
very small, so to speak, and — ah! ejected him again. 

“ Thus in a very few moments I saw his monstrous bulk 
descend in haste and stand still on the outer steps. He had 
stopped close to me for the purpose of profound meditation: 
his large purple cheeks quivered. He was biting his thumb, 
and after a while noticed me with a sidelong vexed look. 
The other three chaps that had landed with him made a 
little group waiting at some distance. There was a sallow¬ 
faced, mean little chap with his arm in a sling, and a long 
individual in a blue flannel coat, as dry as a chip and no 
stouter than a broomstick, with drooping grey moustaches, 
who looked about him with an air of jaunty imbecility. 
The third was an upstanding, broad-shouldered youth, with 
his hands in his pockets, turning his back on the other two 
who appeared to be talking together earnestly. He stared 
across the empty Esplanade. A ramshackle gharry, all dug£ 


3d 


LORD JIM 


and Venetian blinds, pulled up short opposite the group, and 
the driver, throwing up his right foot over his knee, gave 
himself up to the critical examination of his toes. The 
young chap, making no movement, not even stirring his 
head, just stared into the sunshine. This was my first view 
of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as 
only the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed, 
clean-faced, firm on his feet, as promising a boy as the sun 
ever shone on; and, looking at him, knowing all he knew 
and a little more too, I was as angry as though I had 
detected him trying to get something out of me by false 
pretences. He had no business to look so sound. I 
thought to myself — well, if this sort can go wrong like 
that . . . and I felt as though I could fling down my hat and 
dance on it from sheer mortification, as I once saw the 
skipper of an Italian barque do because his duffer of a mate 
got into a mess with his anchors when making a flying moor 
in a roadstead full of ships. I asked myself, seeing him 
there apparently so much at ease — is he silly ? is he cal¬ 
lous? He seemed ready to start whistling a tune. And 
note, I did not care a rap about the behaviour of the other 
two. Their persons somehow fitted the tale that was public 
property, and was going to be the subject of an official 
inquiry. * That old mad rogue upstairs called me a hound/ 
said the captain of the Patna. I can’t tell whether he 
recognised me — I rather think he did; but at any rate our 
glances met. He glared — I smiled; hound was the very 
mildest epithet that had reached me through the open win¬ 
dow. ‘ Did he ? ’ I said from some strange inability to hold 
my tongue. He nodded, bit his thumb again, swore undex 
his breath: then lifting his head and looking at me with 
sullen and passionate impudence — ‘Bah! the Pacific is 
big, my friendt. You damned Englishmen can do your 


LORD JIM 


37 


worst; I know where there’s plenty room for a man like 
me: I am well aguaindt in Apia, in Honolulu, in . . .’ He 
paused reflectively, while without effort I could depict to 
myself the sort of people he was 1 aguaindt’ with in those 
places. I won’t make a secret of it that I had been * aguaindt ’ 
with not a few of that sort myself. There are times when 
a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any 
company. I’ve known such a time, and what’s more, I 
shan’t now pretend to pull a long face over my necessity, 
because a good many of that bad company from want of 
moral — moral —what shall I say ? — posture, or from some 
other equally profound cause, were twice as instructive and 
twenty times more amusing than the usual respectable thief 
of commerce you fellows ask to sit at your table without 
any real necessity — from habit, from cowardice, from good¬ 
nature, from a hundred sneaking and inadequate reasons. 

“‘You Englishmen are all rogues,’ went on my patriotic 
Elensborg or Stettin Australian. I really don’t recollect 
now what decent little port on the shores of the Baltic was 
defiled by being the nest of that precious bird. ‘ What are 
you to shout ? Eh ? You tell me ? You no better than 
other people, and that old rogue he make Gottam fuss with 
me.’ His thick carcass trembled on its legs that were like 
a pair of pillars; it trembled from head to foot. ‘ That’s 
what you English always make — make a tarn’ fuss — for 
any little thing, because I was not born in your tarn’ coun¬ 
try. Take away my certificate. Take it. I don’t want 
the certificate. A man like me don’t want your verfluchte 
certificate. I shpit on it.’ He spat. ‘ I vill an Amerigan 
citizen begome,’ he cried, fretting and fuming and shuffling 
his feet as if to free his ankles from some invisible and 
mysterious grasp that would not let him get away from 
that spot. He made himself so warm that the top of his 


LORD JIM 


38 

bullet head positively smoked. Nothing mysterious pre¬ 
vented me from going away: curiosity is the most obvious 
of sentiments, and it held me there to see the effect of a 
full information upon that young fellow who, hands in 
pockets, and turning his back upon the sidewalk, gazed 
across the grass plots of the Esplanade at the yellow por¬ 
tico of the Malabar Hotel with the air of a man about to 
go for a walk as soon as his friend is ready. That’s how 
he looked, and it was odious. I waited to see him over¬ 
whelmed, confounded, pierced through and through, squirm¬ 
ing like an impaled beetle — and I was half-afraid to see it 
too — if you understand what I mean. Nothing more awful 
than to watch a man who has been found out, not in a crime 
but in a more than criminal weakness. The commonest 
sort of fortitude prevents us from becoming criminals in a 
legal sense; it is from weakness unknown, but perhaps 
suspected, as in some parts of the world you suspect a 
deadly snake in every bush, — from weakness that may lie 
hidden, watched or unwatched, prayed against or manfully 
scorned, repressed or maybe ignored more than half a life- 
time, not one of us is safe. We are snared into doing 
things for which we get called names, and things for which 
we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive, — su*. 
vive the condemnation, survive the halter, by Jove ! And 
there are things — they look small enough sometimes too — 
by which some of us are totally and completely undone. I 
watched the youngster there. I liked his appearance; I 
knew his appearance; he came from the right place; he 
was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his 
kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, 
but whose very existence is based upon honest faith, and 
upon the instinct of courage. I don’t mean military cour¬ 
age, or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. J 


LORD JIM 


39 


mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight 
in the face, — a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness 
knows, but without a pose, — a power of resistance, don’t 
you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless — an unthink¬ 
ing and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward 
terrors, before the might of nature and the seductive cor¬ 
ruption of men — backed by a faith invulnerable to the 
strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solici¬ 
tation of ideas. Hang ideas ! They are tramps, vagabonds, 
knocking at the back door of your mind, each taking a little 
of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that 
belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want 
to live decently and would like to die easy ! 

“ This has nothing to do with Jim, directly; only he was 
outwardly so typical of that good stupid kind we like to 
feel marching right and left of us in life, of the kind that 
is not disturbed by the vagaries of intelligence and the 
perversions of — of nerves, let us say. He was the kind of 
fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in 
charge of the deck — figuratively and professionally speak¬ 
ing. I say I would, and I ought to know. Haven’t I 
turned out youngsters enough in my time, for the service 
of the Red Rag, to the craft of the sea, to the craft whose 
whole secret could be expressed in one short sentence, and 
yet must be driven afresh every day into young heads till 
it becomes the component part of every waking thought — 
till it is present in every dream of their young sleep ! The 
sea has been good to me, but when I remember all these 
boys that passed through my hands, some grown up now 
and some drowned by this time, but all good stuff for the 
sea, I don’t think I have done badly by it either. Were I 
to go home to-morrow, I bet that before two days passed 
over my head some sunburnt young chief mate would over 


40 


LORD JIM 


take me at some dock gateway or other, and a fresh deep 
voice speaking above my hat would ask: ‘ Don’t you 

remember me, sir ? Why! little So-and-so. Such and such 
a ship. It was my first voyage.’ And I would remember a 
bewildered little shaver, no higher than the back of this 
chair, with a mother and perhaps a big sister on the quay, 
very quiet but too upset to wave their handkerchiefs at 
the ship that glides out gently between the pier-heads: or 
perhaps some decent middle-aged father who had come 
early with his boy to see him off, and stays all the morning, 
becauje he is interested in the windlass apparently, and 
stays too long, and has got to scramble ashore at last with 
no time at all to say good-bye. The mud pilot on the poop 
‘•mgs out to me in a drawl, ‘Hold her with the check line 
for a moment, Mister Mate. There’s a gentleman wants to 
get ashore. ... Up with you, sir. Nearly got carried off 
to Talcahuano, didn’t you? Now’s your time; easy does 
it. . . . All right. Slack away again forward there.’ The 
tugs, smoking like the pit of perdition, get hold and chum 
the old river into fury; the gentleman ashore is dusting 
his knees — the benevolent steward has shied his umbrella 
after him. All very proper. He has offered his bit of 
sacrifice to the sea, and now he may go home pretending he 
thinks nothing of it; and the little willing victim shall be 
very seasick before next morning. By and by, when he 
has learned all the little mysteries and the one great secret 
of the craft, he shall be fit to live or die as the sea may 
decree; and the man who had taken a hand in this fool 
game, in which the sea wins every toss, will be pleased to 
have his back slapped by a heavy young hand, and to hear 
a cheery sea-puppy voice: ‘Do you remember me, sir? 
The little So-and-so.’ 

“ I tell you this is good; it tells you that once in you* 




LORD JIM 


41 


life at least you had gone the right way to work. I have 
been thus slapped, and I have winced, for the slap was 
heavy, and I have glowed all day long and gone to bed 
feeling less lonely in the world by virtue of that hearty 
thump. Don’t I remember the little So-and-so’s! I tell 
you I ought to know the right kind of looks. I would 
have trusted the deck to that youngster on the strength 
of a single glance, and gone to sleep with both eyes — 
and, by Jove! it wouldn’t have been safe. There are 
depths of horror in that thought. He looked as genuine 
as a new sovereign, but there was some infernal alloy in 
his metal. How much ? The least thing — the least drop 
of something rare and accursed; the least drop! — but he 
made you — standing there with his don’t-care-hang air — 
he made you wonder whether perchance he were nothing 
more rare than brass. 

“I couldn’t believe it. I tell you I wanted to see him 
squirm for the honour of the craft. The other two no¬ 
account chaps spotted their captain, and began to move 
slowly towards us. They chatted together as they strolled, 
and I did not care any more than if they had not been 
visible to the naked eye. They grinned at each other — 
might have been exchanging jokes, for all I know. I saw 
that with one of them it was a case of a broken arm; 
and as to the long individual with grey moustaches he was 
the chief engineer, and in various ways a pretty notorious 
personality. They were nobodies. They approached. The 
skipper gazed in an inanimate way between his feet: he 
seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful 
disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison 
He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened 
his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his 
puffed face — to speak to them, I suppose — and then a 




42 


LORD JIM 


thought seemed to strike him. His thick, purplish lips 
came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute 
waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle 
with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected 
to see the whole concern overturned on jfs side, pony and 
all. The driver, shaken out of his meditation over the 
sole of his foot, displayed at once all the signs of intense 
terror, and held with both hands, looking round from his 
box at this vast carcass forcing its way into his convey¬ 
ance. The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously, 
and the crimson nape of that lowered neck, the size of 
these straining thighs, the immense heaving of that dingy, 
striped green-and-orange back, the whole burrowing effort 
of that gaudy and sordid mass, troubled one’s sense of 
probability with a droll and fearsome effect, like one of 
those grotesque and distinct visions that scare and fasci¬ 
nate one in a fever. He disappeared. I half expected 
the roof to split in two, the little box on wheels to burst 
open in the manner of a ripe cotton-pod — but it only 
sank with a click of flattened springs, and suddenly one 
Venetian blind rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, 
jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, dis¬ 
tended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furi¬ 
ous, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with 
vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of 
raw meat. He roared at him to be off, to go on. Where ? 
Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver lashed; the pony 
snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Where ? 
To Apia ? to Honolulu ? He had 6000 miles of tropical 
belt to disport himself in, and I did not hear the pre¬ 
cise address. A snorting pony snatched him into *ewig- 
keit’ in the twinkling of an eye, and I never saw him 
again; and, what’s more, I don’t know of anybody that 





LORD JIM 


43 


^ever had a glimpse of him after he departed from my 
knowledge sitting inside a ramshackle little gharry that 
fled round the corner in a white smother of dust. He 
departed, disappeared, vanished, absconded; and absurdly 
enough it looked as though he had taken that gharry 
with him, for never again did I come across a sorrel pony 
with a slit ear and a lackadaisical Tamil driver afflicted 
by a sore foot. The Pacific is indeed big; but whether 
he found a place for a display of his talents in it or not, 
the fact remains he had flown into space like a witch on 
a broomstick. The little chap with his arm in a sling 
started to run after the carriage, bleating, ‘Captain! I 
say, Captain! I sa-a-ay ! ’ — but after a few steps stopped 
short, hung his head, and walked back slowly. At the 
sharp rattle of the wheels, the young fellow spun round 
where he stood. He made no other movement, no ges¬ 
ture, no sign, and remained facing in the new direction 
after the gharry had swung out of sight. 

“All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, 
since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the 
instantaneous effect of visual impressions. Next moment 
the half-caste clerk, sent by Archie to look a little after the 
poor castaways of the Patna , came upon the scene. He ran 
out eager and bareheaded, looking right and left, and very 
full of his mission. It was doomed to be a failure as far as 
the principal person was concerned, but he approached the 
others with fussy importance, and, almost immediately, 
found himself involved in a violent altercation with the 
chap that carried his arm in a sling, and who turned out to 
be extremely anxious for a row. He wasn’t going to be 
ordered about — ‘not he, b’gosh.’ He wouldn’t be terrified 
with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver. 
He was not going to be bullied by ‘ no object of that sort.’ 


44 


LORD JIM 


if the story were true ‘ ever so ’! He bawled his wish, his 
desire, his determination to go to bed. ‘ If you weren’t a 
God-forsaken Portuguee,’ I heard him yell, ‘ you would know 
that the hospital is the right place for me.’ He pushed the 
fist of his sound arm under the other’s nose; a crowd began 
to collect; the half-caste, flustered, but doing his best to 
appear dignified, tried to explain his intentions. I went 
away without waiting to see the end. 

“ But it so happened that I had a man in the hospital at 
the time, and going there to see about him the day before 
the opening of the Inquiry, I saw in the white men’s ward 
that little chap tossing on his back, with his arm in splints, 
and quite light-headed. To my great surprise the other one, 
the long individual with drooping white moustache, had also 
found his way there. I remembered I had seen him slink¬ 
ing away during the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, 
and trying very hard not to look scared. He was no stranger 
to the port, it seems, and in his distress was able to make 
tracks straight for Mariani’s billiard-room and grog-shop 
near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who 
had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one 
or two other places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speak¬ 
ing, before him, and shut him up with a supply of bottles 
in an upstairs room of his infamous hovel. It appears he 
was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal safety, 
and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a 
long time after (when he came on board one day to dun my 
steward for the price of some cigars) that he would have 
done more for him without asking any questions, from grat¬ 
itude for some unholy favour received very many years ago 
— as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his 
brawny chest, rolled enormous black and white eyes glisten* 
mg with tears: ‘Antonio never forget —Antonio never for- 



LORD JIM 


45 


get ! 9 What was the precise nature of the immoral oblige 
tion I never learned, but be it what it may, he had every 
facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a 
chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen 
plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keep¬ 
ing up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. 
This lasted till the evening of the third day, when, after let¬ 
ting out a few horrible screams, he found himself compelled 
to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes. He burst 
the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy 
little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani’s stomach, picked 
himself up, and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The 
police plucked him off a garbage-heap in the early morn¬ 
ing. At first he had a notion they were carrying him off to 
be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but when I 
sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. 
His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine 
and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier 
with a childlike soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral 
alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resem¬ 
bling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently 
behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm that I 
began to indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something 
explanatory of the famous affair from his point of view. 
Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of 
an occurrence which, after all, concerned me no more than 
as a member of an obscure body of men held together by a 
community of inglorious toil and by fidelity to a certain 
standard of conduct, I can’t explain. You may call it an 
unhealthy curiosity if you like; but I have a distinct notion 
I wished to find something. Perhaps, unconsciously, I 
hoped I would find that something, some profound and 
redeeming cause, some merciful explanation, some con- 


46 


LORD JIM 


vincing shadow of an excuse. I see well enough now that I 
hoped for the impossible — for the laying of what is the 
most obstinate ghost of man’s creation, of the uneasy doubt 
uprising like a mist, secret and gnawing like a worm, and 
more chilling than the certitude of death — the doubt of 
the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of con¬ 
duct. It is the hardest thing to stumble against; it is the 
thing that breeds yelling panics and good little quiet vil- 
lanies; it’s the true shadow of calamity. Did I believe in 
a miracle ? and why did I desire it so ardently ? Was it 
for my own sake that I wished to find some shadow of an 
excuse for that young fellow whom I had never seen before, 
but whose appearance alone added a touch of personal con¬ 
cern to the thoughts suggested by the knowledge of his 
weakness — made it a thing of mystery and terror—like a 
hint of a destructive fate ready for us all whose youth — 
in its day — had resembled his youth ? I fear that such 
was the secret motive of my prying. I was, and no mis¬ 
take, looking for a miracle. The only thing that at this 
distance of time strikes me as miraculous is the extent of 
my imbecility. I positively hoped to obtain from that bat¬ 
tered and shady invalid some exorcism against the ghost of 
doubt. I must have been pretty desperate too, for, without 
loss of time, after a few indifferent and friendly sentences 
which he answered with languid readiness, just as any 
decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna 
wrapped up in a delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. 
I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I 
had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and 
sorry for him : his experience was of no importance, his 
redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown 
old in minor iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion 
or pity. He repeated Patna ? interrogatively, seemed t* 




LORD JIM 


47 


make a short effort of memory, and said: ‘ Quite right. I 
am an old stager out here. I saw her go down/ I made 
ready to vent my indignation at such a stupid lie, when he 
added smoothly, ‘ She was full of reptiles/ 

“This made me pause. What did he mean? The 
unsteady phantom of terror behind his glassy eyes seemed 
to stand still and look into mine wistfully. ‘ They turned 
me out of my bunk in the middle watch to look at her sink¬ 
ing/ he pursued in a reflective tone. His voice sounded 
alarmingly strong all at once. I was sorry for my folly. 
There was no snowy-winged coiff of a nursing sister to be 
seen flitting in the perspective of the ward; but away in 
the middle of a long row of empty iron bedsteads an acci¬ 
dent case from some ship in the Roads sat up brown and 
gaunt with a white bandage set rakishly on the forehead. 
Suddenly my interesting invalid shot out an arm thin like 
a tentacle and clawed my shoulder. ‘ Only my eyes were 
good enough to see. I am famous for my eyesight. That’s 
why they called me, I expect. None of them was quick 
enough to see her go, but they saw that she was gone right 
enough, and sang out together — like this/ ... A wolfish 
howl searched the very recesses of my soul. ‘Oh! make 
hm dry up/ whined the accident case irritably. ‘ You don’t 
believe me, I suppose/ went on the other, with an air of 
ineffable conceit. ‘I tell you there are no such eyes as 
mine this side of the Persian Gulf. Look under the bed/ 

“ Of course I stooped instantly. I defy anybody not to 
have done so. ‘What can you see ? 9 he asked. ‘Nothing/ 
I said, feeling awfully ashamed of myself. He scrutinised 
my face with wild and withering contempt. ‘Just so/he 
said, ‘ but if I were to look I could see — there’s no eyes 
like mine, I tell you/ Again he clawed, pulling at me 
downwards in his eagerness to relieve himself by a confr 


48 


LORD JIM 


dential communication. ‘ Millions of pink toads. Therms 
no eyes like mine. Millions of pink toads. It’s worse than 
seeing a ship sink. I could look at sinking ships and smoke 
my pipe all day long. Why don’t they give me back my 
pipe ? I would get a smoke while I watched these toads. 
The ship was full of them. They’ve got to be watched, you 
know.’ He winked facetiously. The perspiration dripped 
on him off my head, my drill coat clung to my wet back: 
the afternoon breeze swept impetuously over the row of 
bedsteads, the stiff folds of curtains stirred perpendicularly, 
rattling on brass rods, the covers of empty beds blew about 
noiselessly near the bare floor all along the line, and I 
shivered to the very marrow. The soft wind of the tropics 
played in that naked ward as bleak as a winter’s gale in an 
old barn at home. ‘ Don’t you let him start his hollering, 
mister,’ hailed from afar the accident case in a distressed 
angry shout that came ringing between the walls like a 
quavering call down a tunnel. The clawing hand hauled 
at my shoulders; he leered at me knowingly. ‘ The ship 
was full of them, you know, and we had to clear out on the 
strict Q.T.,’ he whispered with extreme rapidity. ‘All pink. 
All pink — as big as mastiffs, with an eye on the top of the 
head and claws all round their ugly mouths. Ough! Ough ! 9 
Quick jerks as of galvanic shocks disclosed under the flat 
coverlet the outlines of meagre and agitated legs; he let go 
my shoulder and reached after something in the air; his 
body trembled tensely like a released harpstring; and while 
I looked down, the spectral horror in him broke through his 
glassy gaze. Instantly his face of an old soldier, with its 
noble and calm outlines, became decomposed before my eyes 
by the corruption of stealthy cunning, of an abominable 
caution and of desperate fear. He restrained a cry — ‘ Ssh; 
vbat are they doing now down there?’ he asked, pointing 



LORD JIM 


,o the floor with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, 
whose meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made 
me very sick of my cleverness. ‘They are all asleep/ 1 
answered, watching him narrowly. That was it. That’s 
what he wanted to hear; these were the exact words that 
could calm him. He drew a long breath. ‘Ssh! Quiet, 
steady. I am an old stager out here. I know them brutes. 
Bash-in the head of the first that stirs. There’s too many 
of them, and she won’t swim more than ten minutes.’ He 
panted again. ‘ Hurry up,’ he yelled suddenly, and went 
on in a steady scream: ‘They are all awake—millions of 
them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait! I’ll 
smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! 
H-e-elp! ’ An interminable and sustained howl completed 
my discomfiture. 3? saw in the distance the accident case 
raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head , a 
dresser, aproned to the chin, showed himself in the vista of 
ihe ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I con¬ 
fessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping 
out through one of the long windows, escaped into the out¬ 
side gallery. The howl pursued me like a vengeance. I 
turned into a deserted landing, and suddenly all became 
very still and quiet around me, and I descended the bare 
and shiny staircase in a silence that enabled me to compose 
my distracted thoughts. Down below I met one of the 
resident surgeons who was crossing the courtyard and 
stopped me. ‘Been to see your man, Captain? I think 
we may let him go to-morrow. These fools have no notion 
of taking care of themselves, though. I say, we’ve got the 
chief engineer of that pilgrim ship here. A curious case. 
D.T.’s of the worst kind. He has been drinking bard in 
that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop for three days. What 
can you expect ? Four bottles of that kind of brandy a 


50 


LORD JIM 


day, I am told. Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler- 
iron inside, I should think. The head, ah! the head, of 
course, gone, but the curious part is there’s some sort of 
method in his raving. I am trying to find out. Most 
unusual — that thread of logic in such a delirium. Tradi¬ 
tionally he ought to see snakes, but he doesn’t. Good old 
tradition’s at a discount nowadays. Eh! His — er — visions 
are batrachian. Ha! ha! No, seriously, I never remember 
being so interested in a case of jim-jams before. He ought 
to be dead, don’t you know, after such a festive experiment. 
Oh! he is a tough object. Four-and-twenty years of the 
tropics too. You ought really to take a peep at him. Noble¬ 
looking old boozer. Most extraordinary man I ever met — 
medically, of course. Won’t you ? ’ 

“ I had been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of 
interest, but now, assuming an air of regret, I murmured of 
want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. ‘ I say,’ he 
cried after me, 1 he can’t attend that inquiry. Is his evi¬ 
dence material, you think ? ’ 

“ ‘Not in the least,’ I called back from the gateway.” 


CHAPTER VI 

“The authorities were evidently of the same opinion. 
The inquiry was not adjourned. It was held on the ap¬ 
pointed day to satisfy the law, and it was well attended 
because of its human interest, no doubt. There was no 
incertitude as to facts — as to the one material fact, I mean. 
How the Patna came by her hurt it was impossible to find 
out; the court did not expect to find out; and in the whole 
audience there was not a man who cared. Yet, as I’ve told 
you, all the sailors in the port attended, and the waterside 



LORD JIM 


51 


business was fully represented. Whether they knew it or 
not, the interest that drew them there was purely psycho¬ 
logical,— the expectation of some essential disclosure as to 
the strength, the power, the horror, of human emotions 
Naturally nothing of the kind could be disclosed. The 
examination of the only man able and willing to face it was 
beating futilely round the well-known fact, and the play of 
questions upon it was as instructive as the tapping with a 
hammer on an iron box, were the object to find out what’s 
inside. However, an official inquiry could not be any other 
thing. Its object was not the fundamental why, but the 
superficial how, of this affair. 

“The young chap could ha\e told them, and, though 
that very thing was the thing that interested the audience, 
the questions put to him necessarily led him away from 
what to me, for instance, would have been the only truth 
worth knowing. You can’t expect the constituted authori¬ 
ties to inquire into the state of a man’s soul — or is it only 
of his liver ? Their business was to come down upon the 
consequences, and frankly, a casual police magistrate and 
two nautical assessors are not much good for anything else. 
I don’t mean to imply these fellows were stupid. The 
magistrate was very patient. One of the assessors was a 
sailing-ship skipper with a reddish beard, and of a pious 
disposition. Brierly was the other. Big Brierly. Some 
of you must have heard of Big Brierly — the captain of 
the crack ship of the Blue Star line. That’s the man. 

“ He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon 
him. He had never in his life made a mistake, never had 
an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady 
rise, and he seemed to be one of these lucky fellows who 
know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust. At 
thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in th& 


LORD JIM 


Eastern trade — and, what’s more, he thought a lot of what 
he had. There was nothing like it in the world, and I sup¬ 
pose if you had asked him point-blank he would have con¬ 
fessed that in his opinion there was not such another 
commander. The choice had fallen upon the right man. 
The rest of mankind that did not command the sixteen-knot 
steel steamer Ossa were rather poor creatures. He had 
6aved lives at sea, had rescued ships in distress, had a gold 
chronometer presented to him by the underwriters, and a 
pair of binoculars with a suitable inscription from some 
foreign Government, in commemoration of these services. 
He was acutely aware of his merits and of his rewards. 
I liked him well enough, though some I know — meek, 
friendly men at that — couldn’t stand him at any price. I 
haven’t the slightest doubt he considered himself vastly my 
superior — indeed, had you been Emperor of East and West 
you could not have ignored your inferiority in his presence 
—but I couldn’t get up any real sentiment of offence. He 
did not despise me for anything I could help, for anything 
I was — don’t you know? I was a negligible quantity 
•imply because I was not the fortunate man of the earth, 
not Montague Brierly in command of the Ossa } not the 
owner of an inscribed gold chronometer and of silver- 
mounted binoculars testifying to the excellence of my sea¬ 
manship and to my indomitable pluck; not possessed of an 
acute sense of my merits and of my rewards, besides the 
love and worship of a black retriever, the most wonderful 
of its kind — for never was such a man loved thus by such 
a dog. No doubt, to have all this forced upon you was 
exasperating enough; but when I reflected that I was 
associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hun¬ 
dred millions of other more or less human beings, I found 
I could bear my share of his good-natured and contempt** 


LORD JIM 


53 


ous pity for tlie sake of something indefinite and attractive 
in the man. I have never defined to myself this attraction, 
but there were moments when I envied him. The sting of 
life could do no more to his complacent soul than the 
scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. This was 
enviable. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the 
unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the in¬ 
quiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world 
a surface as hard as granite. He committed suicide very 
soon after. 

“No wonder Jim’s case bored him, and while I thought 
with something akin to fear of the immensity of his con¬ 
tempt for the young man under examination, he was proba¬ 
bly holding silent inquiry into his own case. The verdict 
must have been of unmitigated guilt, and he took the secret 
of the evidence with him in that leap into the sea. If I 
understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of 
the gravest import — one of those trifles that awaken ideas, 
start into life some thought with which a man unused 
to such a companionship finds it impossible to live. I am 
in a position to know that it wasn’t money, and it wasn’t 
drink, and it wasn’t woman. He jumped overboard at sea 
barely a week after the end of the inquiry, and less than 
three days after leaving port on his outward passage; as 
though on that exact spot in the midst of waters he had 
suddenly perceived the gates of the other world flung open 
wide for his reception. 

“ Yet it was not a sudden impulse. His grey-headed 
mate, a first-rate sailor and a nice old chap with strangers, 
but in his relations with his commander the surliest chief 
officer I’ve ever seen, would tell the story with tears in his 
eyes. It appears that when he came on deck in the morn¬ 
ing Brierly had been writing in the chart-room. ‘ It was 


54 


LORD JIM 


ten minutes to four/ he said, *and the middle watch wm 
not relieved yet, of course. He heard my voice on the 
bridge speaking to the second mate, and called me in. I 
was loath to go, and that’s the truth, Captain Marlow, — I 
couldn’t stand poor Captain Brierly, I tell you with shame; 
we never know what a man is made of. He had been 
promoted over too many heads, not counting my own, and 
he had a damnable trick of making you feel small, nothing 
but by the way he said “ Good morning.” I never ad¬ 
dressed him, sir, but on matters of duty, and then it was as 
much as I could do to keep a civil tongue in my head/ 
(He flattered himself there. I often wondered how Brierly 
could put up with his manners for more than half a voyage.) 
1 I’ve a wife and children,’ he went on, 1 and I had been 
ten years in the Company, always expecting the next com. 
mand — more fool I. Says he, just like this: “Come in 
here, Mr. Jones,” in that swagger voice of his — “Come 
in here, Mr. Jones.” In I went. “We’ll lay down her 
position,” says he, stooping over the chart, a pair of 
dividers in hand. By the standing orders the officer going 
off duty would have done that at the end of his watch. 
However, I said nothing, and looked on while he marked 
off the ship’s position with a tiny cross and wrote the date 
and the time. I can see him this moment writing his neat 
figures: seventeen, eight, four a.m. The year would be 
written in red ink at the top of the chart. He never used 
bis charts more than a year, Captain Brierly didn’t. I’ve 
the chart now. When he had done he stands looking down 
at the mark he had made and smiling to himself, then looks 
up at me. “ Thirty-two miles more as she goes,” says he, 
“ and then we shall be clear, and you may alter the course 
twenty degrees to the southward.” 

*‘We were passing to the north of the Hector Bank that 


LORD JIM 


55 


voyage. I said, “All right, sir,” wondering what he was 
fussing about, since I had to call him before altering the 
course anyhow. Just then tight bells were struck: we 
came out on the bridge, and the second mate before going 
off mentions in the usual way — “ Seventy-one on the log.” 
Captain Brierly looks at the compass and then all round. 
It was dark and clear, and all the stars were out as plain as 
on a frosty night in high latitudes. Suddenly he says with 
a sort of a little sigh: “lam going aft, and shall set the 
log at zero for you myself, so that there can be no mistake. 
Thirty-two miles more on this course and then you are safe. 
Let’s see — the correction on the log is six per cent addi¬ 
tive ; say, then, thirty by the dial to run, and you may 
come twenty degrees to starboard at once. No use losing 
any distance — is there ? ” I had never heard him talk so 
much at a stretch, and to no purpose as it seemed to me. I 
said nothing. He went down the ladder, and the dog, that 
was always at his heels whenever he moved, night or day, 
followed, sliding nose first, after him. I heard his boot- 
heels tap, tap on the after-deck, then he stopped and spoke 
to the dog — “ Go back, Rover. On the bridge, boy! Go 
on — get.” Then he calls out to me from the dark, “ Shut 
that dog up in the chart-room, Mr. Jones — will you ?” 

“ 1 This was the last time I heard his voice, Captain Mar¬ 
low. These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of 
any living human being, sir.’ At this point the old chap’s 
Voice got quite unsteady. ‘ He was afraid the poor brute 
would jump after him, don’t you see ? 9 he pursued with a 
quaver. ‘ Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he 
— would you believe it ? — he put a drop of oil in it too. 
There was the oil-feeder where he left it near by. The 
boatswain’s mate got the hose along aft to wash down at 
half-past five; by and by he knocks off and runs up on the 


56 


LORD JIM 


bridge, — “ Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones,” he saya 
“ There’s a funny thing. I don’t like to touch it.” It was 
Captain Brierly’s gold chronometer watch carefully hung 
under the rail by its chain. 

“ ‘ As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and 
I knew, sir. My legs got soft under me. It was as if I 
had seen him go over; and I could tell how far behind he 
was left too. The taffrail-log marked eighteen miles and 
three-quarters, and four iron belaying-pins were missing 
round the mainmast. Put them in his pockets to help him 
down, I suppose; but, Lord! what’s four iron pins to a 
powerful man like Captain Brierly. Maybe his confidence 
in himself was just shook a bit at the last. That’s the only 
sign of fluster he gave in his whole life, I should think; but 
I am ready to answer for him, that once over he did not try 
to swim a stroke, the same as he would have had pluck 
enough to keep up all day long on the bare chance had he 
fallen overboard accidentally. Yes, sir. He was second to 
none — if he said so himself, as I heard him once. He had 
written two letters in the middle watch, one to the Com¬ 
pany and the other to me. He gave me a lot of instructions 
as to the passage — I had been in the trade before he was 
out of his time — and no end of hints as to my conduct 
with our people in Shanghai, so that I should keep the com¬ 
mand of the Ossa. He wrote like a father would to a favour¬ 
ite son, Captain Marlow, and I was five-and-twenty years 
his senior and had tasted salt water before he was fairly 
breeched. In his letter to the owners—it was left open for 
me to see — he said that he had always done his duty by 
them — up to that moment—and even now he was not 
betraying their confidence, since he was leaving the ship to 
as competent a seaman as could be found — meaning me, 
sir, meaning me! He told them that if the last act of his 


LORD JIM 


m 

life didn’t take away all his credit with them, they would 
give weight to my faithful service and to his warm recom¬ 
mendation, when about to fill the vacancy made by his 
death. And much more like this, sir. I couldn’t believe 
my eyes. It made me feel queer all over,’ went on the old 
chap, in great perturbation, and squashing something in the 
corner of his eye with the end of a thumb as broad as a 
spatula. ‘ You would think, sir, he had jumped overboard 
only to give an unlucky man a last show to get on. What 
with the shock of him going in this awful rash way, and 
thinking myself a made man by that chance, I was nearly 
off my chump for a week. But no fear. The captain of 
the Pelion was shifted into the Ossa — came aboard in 
Shanghai — a little popinjay, sir, in a grey check suit, with 
his hair parted in the middle. “Aw—lam—aw — your 
new captain, Mister — Mister — aw — Jones.” He was 
drowned in scent—fairly stunk with it, Captain Marlow. I 
daresay it was the look I gave him that made him stammer. 
He mumbled something about my natural disappointment 
— I had better know at once that his chief officer got the 
promotion to the Pelion — he had nothing to do with it, of 
course — suppose the office knew best — sorry. . . . Says I, 
“ Don’t you mind old Jones, sir; dam’ his soul, he’s used to 
it.” I could see directly I had shocked his delicate ear, 
and while we sat at our first tiffin together he began to find 
fault in a nasty manner with this and that in the ship. I 
never heard such a voice out of a Punch and Judy show. I 
set my teeth hard, and glued my eyes to my plate, and held 
my peace as long as I could; but at last I had to say some¬ 
thing : up he jumps tiptoeing, ruffling all his pretty plumes, 
like a little fighting cock. “ You’ll find you have a differ¬ 
ent person to deal with than the late Captain Brierly.” 
u I’ve found it,” says I, very glum, but pretending to be 


58 


LORD JIM 


mighty busy with my steak. “ You are an old ruffian, Mr- 

— aw — Jones; and what’s more, you are known for an old 
ruffian in the employ,” he squeaks at me. The damned 
bottle-washers stood about listening with their mouths 
stretched from ear to ear. “1 may be a hard case,” answers 
I, “ but I ain’t so far gone as to put up with the sight of 
you sitting in Captain Brierly’s chair.” With that I lay 
down my knife and fork. “ You would like to sit in it 
yourself — that’s where the shoe pinches,” he sneers. I left 
the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with 
all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had 
turned to again. Yes. Adrift — on shore — after ten 
years’ service — and with a poor woman and four children 
six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay for every 
mouthful they ate. Yes, sir! I chucked it rather than 
hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his night-glasses 

— here they are; and he wished me to take care of the dog 

— here he is. Halloo, Rover, poor boy. Where’s the cap¬ 
tain, Rover ? ’ The dog looked up at us with mournful yel¬ 
low eyes, gave one desolate bark, and crept under the table. 

“All this was taking place, more than two years after¬ 
ward, on board that nautical ruin the Fire-Queen this Jones 
had got charge of — quite by a funny accident, too — from 
Matherson — mad Matherson they generally called him — 
the same who used to hand out in Hai-phong, you know, 
before the occupation days. The old chap snuffled on — 

“ 1 Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, ii 
there’s no other place on earth. I wrote fully to his father 
and did not get a word in reply — neither Thank you, nor Go 
to the devil! — nothing! Perhaps they did not want to know.’ 

“The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his 
bald head with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing 
yelp of the dog, the squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which 


LORD JIM 


59 


was the only shrine of his memory, threw a veil of inex¬ 
pressible mean pathos over Brierly’s remembered figure, 
the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief in his own 
splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legiti¬ 
mate terrors. Almost! Perhaps wholly. Who can tell 
what flattering view he had induced himself to take of his 
own suicide. 

“ ‘ Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow — 
can you think? ’ asked Jones, pressing his palms together. 
‘ Why ? It beats me! Why ? ’ He slapped his low and 
wrinkled forehead. ‘ If he had been poor and old and in 
debt — and never a show — or else mad. But he wasn’t 
of the kind that goes mad, not he. You trust me. What 
a mate don’t know about his skipper isn’t worth knowing. 
Young, healthy, well off, no cares. ... I sit here some¬ 
times thinking, thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. 
There was some reason.’ 

u 1 You may depend upon it, Captain Jones,’ said I, 1 it 
wasn’t anything that would have disturbed much either 
of us two,’ I said; and then, as if a light had been flashed 
into the muddle of his brain, poor old Jones found a last 
word of amazing profundity. He blew his nose, nodding 
at me dolefully: ‘ Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir, had ever 
thought so much of ourselves.’ 

“ Of course the recollection of my last conversation with 
Brierly is tinged with the knowledge of his end that 
followed so close upon it. I spoke with him for the last 
time during the progress of the inquiry. It was after the 
first adjournment, and he came up with me in the street. 
He was in a state of irritation, which I noticed with sur¬ 
prise, his usual behaviour when he condescended to converse 
being perfectly cool, with a trace of amused tolerance, as if 
the existence of his interlocutor had been a rather good 


<50 


LORD JIM 


joke. ‘ They caught me for that inquiry, you see/ he began, 
and for a while enlarged complainingly upon the inconven¬ 
iences of daily attendance in court. ‘ And goodness knows 
how long it will last. Three days, I suppose/ I heard him 
out in silence; in my then opinion it was a way as good as 
another of putting on side. ‘ What’s the use of it ? It is 
the stupidest set out you can imagine/ he pursued hotly. 
I remarked that there was no option. He interrupted me 
with a sort of pent-up violence. ‘1 feel like a fool all the 
time/ I looked up at him. This was going very far — 
for Brierly — when talking of Brierly. He stopped short, 
and seizing the lappel of my coat, gave it a slight tug. 
‘Why are we tormenting that young chap?’ he asked. 
This question chimed in so well to the tolling of a certain 
thought of mine that, with the image of the absconding 
renegade in my eye, I answered at once, ‘ Hanged if I know, 
unless it be that he lets you/ I was astonished to see him 
fall into line, so to speak, with that utterance, which ought 
to have been tolerably cryptic. He said angrily, ‘Why, 
yes. Can’t he see that wretched skipper of his has cleared 
out? What does he expect to happen? Nothing can save 
him. He’s done for/ We walked on in silence a few 
steps. ‘Why eat all that dirt?’ he exclaimed, with an 
oriental energy of expression — about the only sort of 
energy you can find a trace of east of the fiftieth meridian. 
I wondered greatly at the direction of his thoughts, but now 
I strongly suspect it was strictly in character: at bottom 
poor Brierly must have been thinking of himself. I pointed 
out to him that the skipper of the Patna was known to 
have feathered his nest pretty well, and could procure 
almost anywhere the means of getting away. With Jim it 
was otherwise: the Government was keeping him in the 
Sailors’ Home for the time being, and probably he hadn’t a 


LORD JIM 


61 


penny in his pocket to bless himself with. It costs some 
money to run away. i Does it? Not always/he said, with 
a bitter laugh, and to some further remark of mine — ‘ Well, 
then, let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there! 
By heavens! I would/ I don’t know why his tone pro¬ 
voked me, and I said, *There is a kind of courage in facing 
it out as he does, knowing very well that if he went away 
nobody would trouble to run after him/ ‘Courage be 
hanged!’ growled Brierly. ‘ That sort of courage is of no 
use to keep a man straight, and I don’t care a snap for such 
courage. If you were to say it was a kind of cowardice 
now — of softness. I tell you what, I will put up two hun¬ 
dred rupees if you put up another hundred and undertake 
to make the beggar clear out early to-morrow morning. 
The fellow’s a gentleman if he ain’t fit to be touched — he 
will understand. He must! This infernal publicity is too 
shocking: there he sits while all these confounded natives, 
serangs, lascars, quartermasters, are giving evidence that’s 
enough to burn a man to ashes with shame. This is abomi¬ 
nable. Why, Marlow, don’t you think, don’t you feel, that 
this is abominable; don’t you now — come — as a seaman ? 
If he went away all this would stop at once/ Brierly said 
these words with a most unusual animation, and made as if 
to reach after his pocketbook. I restrained him, and de¬ 
clared coldly that the cowardice of these four men did not 
seem to me a matter of such great importance. ‘ And you 
call yourself a seaman, I suppose,’ he pronounced angrily. 
I said that’s what I called myself, and I hoped I was too. 
He heard me out, and made a gesture with his big arm that 
seemed to deprive mo of my individuality, to push me away 
into the crowd. ‘ The worst of it,’ he said, ‘ is that all you 
fellows have no sense of dignity; you don’t think enough 
of what you are supposed to be/ 


62 


LORD JIM 


“We had been walking slowly meantime, and now 
stopped opposite the harbour office, in sight of the very 
spot from which the immense captain of the Patna had 
vanished as utterly as a tiny feather blown away in a hur¬ 
ricane. I smiled. Brierly went on: ‘This is a disgrace. 
We’ve got all kinds amongst us — some anointed scoun¬ 
drels in the lot; but, hang it, we must preserve profes¬ 
sional decency or we become no better than so many 
tinkers going about loose. We are trusted. Do you un¬ 
derstand ? — trusted! Frankly, I don’t care a snap for 
all the pilgrims that ever came out of Asia, but a decent 
man would not have behaved like this to a full cargo of 
*>ld rags in bales. We aren’t an organised body of men, 
find the only thing that holds us together is just the name 
for that kind of decency. Such an affair destroys one’s 
confidence. A man may go pretty near through his whole 
sea-life without any call to show a stiff upper lip. But 
when the call comes. . . . Aha! . . . If I . . .’ 

“ He broke off, and in a changed tone, ‘ I’ll give you two 
hundred rupees now, Marlow, and you just talk to that 
chap. Confound him! I wish he had never come out 
here. Fact is, I rather think some of my people know 
his. The old man’s a parson, and I remember now I met 
him once when staying with my cousin in Essex last year. 
If I am not mistaken, the old chap seemed rather to fancy 
his sailor son. Horrible. I can’t do it myself—but 
you. . . 

“Thus, apropos of Jim, I had a glimpse of the real 
Brierly a few days before he committed his reality and 
his sham together to the keeping of the sea. Of course I 
declined to meddle. The tone of this last ‘but you’ (poor 
Brierly couldn’t help it), that seemed to imply I was no 
more noticeable than an insect, caused me to look at the 


LORD JIM 


63 


proposal with indignation, and on account of that provoca¬ 
tion, or for some other reason, I became positive in my 
mind that the inquiry was a severe punishment to that 
Jim, and that his facing it — practically of his own free¬ 
will — was a redeeming feature in his abominable case. I 
hadn’t been so sure of it before. Brierly went off in a huff. 
At the time his state of mind was more of a mystery to me 
than it is now. 

“Next day, coming into court late, I sat by myself. Of 
course I could not forget the conversation I had with 
Brierly, and now I had them both under my eyes. The 
demeanour of one suggested gloomy impudence and of the 
other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude might not 
have been truer than the other, and I was aware that one 
was not true. Brierly was not bored — he was exasper¬ 
ated ; and if so, then Jim might not have been impudent. 
According to my theory he was not. I imagined he was 
hopeless. Then it was that our glances met. They met, 
and the look he gave me was discouraging of any intention 
I might have had to speak to him. Upon either hypothe¬ 
sis ~ insolence or despair — I felt I could be of no use to 
him. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very 
soon after that exchange of glances the inquiry was ad¬ 
journed again to the next day. The white men began to 
troop out at once. Jim had been told to stand down some 
time before, and was able to leave amongst the first. I saw 
his broad shoulders and his head Outlined in the light of 
the door, and while I made my way slowly out talking 
with some one — some stranger who had addressed me 
casually — I could see him from within the court-room 
resting both elbows on the balustrade of the verandah and 
turning his back on the small stream of people trickling 
down the few steps. There was a murmur of voices and 
ft shuffle of boots. 


64 


LORD JIM 


“The next case was that of assault and battery com. 
mitted upon a money-lender, I believe; and the defendant 
— a venerable villager with a straight white beard — sat 
on a mat just outside the door with his sons, daughters, 
sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think, half the 
population of his village besides, squatting or standing 
around him. A slim dark woman, with part of her back 
and one black shoulder bared, and with a thin gold ring 
in her nose, suddenly began to talk in a high-pitched, 
shrewish tone. The man with me instinctively looked up 
at her. We were then just through the door, passing 
behind Jim’s burly back. 

“Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog 
with them, I don’t know. Anyhow, a dog was there, 
weaving himself in and out amongst people’s legs in that 
mute, stealthy way native dogs have, and my companion 
stumbled over him. The dog leaped away without a 
sound; the man, raising his voice a little, said with a 
slow laugh, ‘Look at that wretched cur,’ and directly 
afterwards we became separated by a lot of people push¬ 
ing in. I stood back for a moment against the wall 
while the stranger managed to get down the steps and 
disappeared. I saw Jim spin round. He made a step for¬ 
ward and barred my way. We were alone; he glared at 
me with an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware 
I was being held up, so to speak, as if in a wood. The 
verandah was empty by then, the noise and movement in 
court had ceased: a great silence fell upon the building, 
in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice began 
to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying 
to sneak in at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for 
fleas. 

“‘Did you speak to me?’ asked Jim very low, and 


LORD JIM 


65 


bending forward, not so much towards me but at me, if 
you know what I mean. I said ‘No’ at once. Something 
in the sound of that quiet tone of his warned me to be 
on my defence. I watched him. It was very much like 
a meeting in a wood, only more uncertain in its issue, 
since he could possibly want neither my money nor my 
life — nothing that I could simply give up or defend with 
a clear conscience. ‘You say you didn’t/ he said, very 
sombre. ‘ But I heard.’ ‘ Some mistake,’ I protested, 
utterly at a loss, and never taking my eyes off him. To 
watch his face was like watching a darkening sky before 
a clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming 
on, the gloom growing mysteriously intense in the calm 
of maturing violence. 

“ ‘ As far as I know, I haven’t opened my lips in your 
hearing,’ I affirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a 
little angry, too, at the absurdity of this encounter. It 
strikes me now I have never in my life been so near a beat¬ 
ing — I mean it literally; a beating with fists. I suppose 
I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in 
the air. Not that he was actively threatening me. On 
the contrary, he was strangely passive — don’t you know ? 
but he was lowering, and, though not exceptionally big, he 
looked generally fit to demolish a wall. The most reassur¬ 
ing symptom I noticed was a kind of slow and ponderous 
hesitation, which I took as a tribute to the evident sincerity 
of my manner and of my tone. We faced each other. In 
the court the assault case was proceeding. I caught the 
words: ‘Well — buffalo — stick — in the greatness of my 
fear. . . .’ 

“ ‘ What did you mean by staring at me all the morning ? * 
said Jim at last. He looked up and looked down again. 
‘Did you expect us all to sit with downcast eyes out of 


66 


LORD JIM 


regard for your susceptibilities ? ’ I retorted sharply. I 
was not going to submit meekly to any of his nonsense. 
He raised his eyes again, and this time continued to look 
me straight in the face. ‘Ho. That’s all right,’ he pro¬ 
nounced with an air of deliberating with himself upon the 
truth of this statement — ‘ that’s all right. I am going 
through with that. Only’ — and there he spoke a little 
faster — ‘ I won’t let any man call me names outside thir 
court. There was a fellow with you. You spoke to him — 
oh, yes — I know; ’tis all very fine. You spoke to him, but 
you meant me to hear. . . .’ 

“ I assured him he was under some extraordinary delu¬ 
sion. I had no conception how it came about. ‘You 
thought I would be afraid to resent this,’ he said, with just 
a faint tinge of bitterness. I was interested enough to dis¬ 
cern the slightest shades of expression, but I was not in 
the least enlightened; yet I don’t know what in these words, 
or perhaps just the intonation of that phrase, induced me 
suddenly to make all possible allowances for him. I ceased 
to be annoyed at my unexpected predicament. It was some 
mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I had an in¬ 
tuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate 
nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of 
decency, just as one is anxious to cut short some unpro¬ 
voked and abominable confidence. The funniest part was, 
that in the midst of all these considerations of the higher 
order I was conscious of a certain trepidation as to the 
possibility — nay, likelihood — of this encounter ending in 
some disreputable brawl which could not possibly be ex¬ 
plained, and would make me ridiculous. I did not hanker 
after a three days’ celebrity as the man who got a black eye 
or something of the sort from the mate of the Patna. He 
in all probability did not care what he did, or at any rat* 


LORD JIM 


67 


would be fully justified in his own eyes. It took no magi, 
cian to see he was amazingly angry about something, for all 
his quiet and even torpid demeanour. I don’t deny I was 
extremely desirous to pacify him at all costs, had I only 
known what to do. But I didn’t know, as you may well 
imagine. It was a blackness without a single gleam. We 
confronted each other in silence. He hung fire for about 
fifteen seconds, then made a step nearer, and I made ready 
to ward off a blow, though I don’t think I moved a muscle. 
* If you were as big as two men and as strong as six,’ he 
said very softly,‘1 would tell you what I think of you. You 
. . .’ ‘ Stop ! ’ I exclaimed. This checked him for a second. 
‘ Before you tell me what you think of me,’ I went on 
quickly, ‘will you kindly tell me what it is I’ve said or 
done ? ’ During the pause that ensued he surveyed me 
with indignation, while I made supernatural efforts of 
memory, in which I was hindered by the oriental voice 
within the court-room expostulating with impassioned volu¬ 
bility against a charge of falsehood. Then we spoke almost 
together. ‘ I will soon show you I am not,’ he said, in a 
tone suggestive of a crisis. ‘ I declare I don’t know,’ I pro 
tested earnestly at the same time. He tried to crush me 
by the scorn of his glance. ‘Now that you see I am not 
afraid you try to crawl out of it,’ he said. ‘ Who’s a cur 
now — hey ? ’ Then, at last, I understood. 

“ He had been scanning my features as though looking 
for a place where he would plant his fist. ‘ I will allow no 
man,’ ... he mumbled threateningly. It was, indeed, a 
hideous mistake; he had given himself away utterly. I 
can’t give you an idea how shocked I was. I suppose he 
saw some reflection of my feelings in my face, because his 
expression changed just a little. ‘Good God!’ I stam¬ 
mered,‘you don’t think I . . .’ ‘But I am sure I’ve heard’ 


LORD JIM 


<38 

he persisted, raising his voice for the first time since the 
beginning of this deplorable scene. Then with a shade oi 
disdain he added, ‘It wasn’t you, then? Very well; F13 
find the other.’ ‘ Don’t be a fool,’ I cried in exasperation; 
‘ it wasn’t that at all.’ ‘ I’ve heard,’ he said again, with an 
unshaken and sombre perseverance. 

“ There may be those who could have laughed at his per¬ 
tinacity. I didn’t. Oh, I didn’t! There had never been a 
man so mercilessly shown up by his own natural impulse. 
A single word had stripped him of his discretion — of that 
discretion which is more necessary to the decencies of our 
inner being than clothing is to the decorum of our body. 
‘ Don’t be a fool,’ I repeated. ‘ But the other man said it, 
you don’t deny that ? ’ he pronounced distinctly, and looked 
in my face without flinching. ‘No, I don’t deny,’ said I, 
returning his gaze. At last his eyes followed downwards 
the direction of my pointing finger. He appeared at first 
uncomprehending, then confounded, and at last amazed and 
scared, as though a dog had been a monster, and he had 
never seen a dog before. ‘Nobody dreamt of insulting 
you,’ I said. 

“ He contemplated the wretched animal, that moved no 
more than an effigy: it sat with ears pricked and its sharp 
muzzle pointed into the doorway, and suddenly snapped at 
a fly like a piece of mechanism. 

“I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt com¬ 
plexion deepened suddenly under the down of his cheeks, 
invaded his forehead, spread to the roots of his curly hair. 
His ears became intensely crimson, and even the clear blue 
of his eyes was darkened many shades by the rush of blood 
to his head. His lips pouted a little, trembling as though 
he had been on the point of bursting into tears. I per¬ 
ceived he was incapable of pronouncing a word from fhe 




LORD JIM 


69 


excess of his humiliation. From disappointment too — 
who knows? Perhaps he looked forward to that ham¬ 
mering he was going to give me for rehabilitation, for 
appeasement ? Who can tell what relief he expected from 
this chance of a row ? He was naive enough to expect any¬ 
thing ; but he had given himself away for nothing in this 
case. He had been frank with himself — let alone with 
me — in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some 
effective refutation, and the stars had been ironically un- 
propitious. He made an inarticulate noise in his throat 
like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the head. It 
was pitiful. 

“ I didn’t catch up again with him till well outside the 
gate. I had even to trot a bit at the last, but when, out of 
breath at his elbow, I taxed him with running away, he 
said, 1 Never!’ and at once turned at bay. I explained I 
never meant to say he was running away from me. ‘ From 
no man — from not a single man on earth/ he affirmed with 
a stubborn mien. I forbore to point out the one obvious 
exception which would hold good for the bravest of us; 
I thought he would find out by himself very soon. He 
looked at me patiently while I was thinking of something 
to say, but I could find nothing on the spur of the moment, 
and he began to walk on. I kept up, and anxious not to 
lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn’t think of leaving 
him under a false impression of my — of my — I stam¬ 
mered. The stupidity of the phrase appalled me while I 
was trying to finish it, but the power of sentences has noth, 
ing to do with their sense or the logic of their construction. 
My idiotic mumble seemed to please him. He cut it short 
by saying, with courteous placidity that argued an immense 
power of self-control or else a wonderful elasticity of spirits 
'—‘Altogether my mistake.’ I marvelled greatly at thi* 



ro 


LORD JIM 


expression: he might have been alluding to some trifling 
occurrence. Hadn’t he understood its deplorable meaning ? 
< You may well forgive me,’ he continued, and went on a 
little moodily, ‘ All these staring people in court seemed 
such fools that — that it might have been as I supposed.’ 

“ This opened suddenly a new view of him to my wonder. 
I looked at him curiously, and met his unabashed and im¬ 
penetrable eyes. ‘ I can’t put up with this kind of thing/ 
he said, very simply, ‘and I don’t mean to. In court it’s 
different; I’ve got to stand that — and I can do it too.’ 

" I don’t pretend I understood him. The views he let me 
have of himself were like those glimpses through the shifts 
ing rents in a thick fog—bits of vivid and vanishing detail, 
giving no connected idea of the general aspect of a country. 
They fed one’s curiosity without satisfying it; they were 
no good for purposes of orientation. Upon the whole he 
was misleading. That’s how I summed him up to myself 
after he left me late in the evening. I had been staying at 
the Malabar House for a few days, and on my pressing invi¬ 
tation he dined with me there.” 


CHAPTER VII 

“An outward-bound mail-boat had come in that after¬ 
noon, and the big dining-room of the hotel was more 
than half full of people with a hundred pounds round- 
the-world tickets in their pockets. There were married 
couples looking domesticated and bored with each other 
in the midst of their travels; there were small parties 
and large parties, and lone individuals dining solemnly 
or feasting boisterously, but all thinking, conversing, jok¬ 
ing, or scowling as was their wont at home; and just as 



LORD JIM 


71 


intelligently receptive of new impressions as their trunks 
upstairs. Henceforth they would be labelled as having 
passed through this and that place, and so would be 
their luggage. They would cherish this distinction of 
their persons, and preserve the gummed tickets on their 
portmanteaus as documentary evidence, as the only per¬ 
manent trace of their improving enterprise. The dark¬ 
faced servants tripped without noise over the vast and 
polished floor; now and then a girl’s laugh would be 
heard, as innocent and empty as her mind, or, in a sud¬ 
den hush of crockery, a few words in an affected drawl 
from some wit embroidering for the benefit of a grinning 
tableful the last funny story of shipboard scandal. Two 
nomadic old maids, dressed up to kill, worked acrimoni¬ 
ously through the bill of fare, whispering to each other 
with faded lips, wooden-faced and bizarre, like two sumpt¬ 
uous scarecrows. A little wine opened Jim’s heart and 
loosened his tongue. His appetite was good, too, I noticed. 
He seemed to have buried somewhere the opening episode 
of our acquaintance. It was like a thing of which there 
would be no more question in this world. And all the 
time I had before me these blue, boyish eyes looking 
straight into mine, this young face, these capable shoul¬ 
ders, the open bronzed forehead with a white line under 
the roots of clustering fair hair, this appearance appealing 
at sight to all my sympathies: this frank aspect, the art¬ 
less smile, the youthful seriousness. He was of the right 
sort; he was one of us. He talked soberly, with a sort 
of composed unreserve, and with a quiet bearing that 
might have been the outcome of manly self-control, of 
impudence, of callousness, of a colossal unconsciousness, 
of a gigantic deception. Who can tell! From our tone 
we might have been discussing a third person, a football 




72 


LORD JIM 


match, last year's weather. My mind floated in a sea of 
conjectures till the turn of the conversation enabled me, 
without being offensive, to remark that, upon the whole, 
this inquiry must have been pretty trying to him. He 
darted his arm across the tablecloth, and, clutching my 
hand by the side of my plate, glared fixedly. I was 
startled. ‘It must be awfully hard/ I stammered, con* 
fused by this display of speechless feeling. ‘ It is — hell/ 
he burst out in a muffled voice. 

“This movement and these words caused two well-groomed 
male globe-trotters at a neighbouring table to look up in 
alarm from their iced pudding. I rose, and we passed into 
the front gallery for coffee and cigars. 

“ On little octagon tables candles burned in glass globes; 
clumps of stiff-leaved plants separated sets of cosy wickei 
chairs; and between the pairs of columns, whose reddish 
shafts caught in a long row the sheen from the tail win¬ 
dows, the night, glittering and sombre, seemed to han * like 
a splendid drapery. The riding-lights of the ships winked 
afar like setting stars, and the hills across the roadstead 
resembled rounded black masses of arrested thunder-clouds. 

“‘I couldn’t clear out/ Jim began. ‘The skipper did — 
that’s all very well for him. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t. 
They all got out of it in one way or another, but it wouldn’t 
do for me.’ 

“I listened with concentrated attention, not daring tc 
stir in my chair; I wanted to know — and to this day I 
<lon’t know, I can only guess. He would be confident and 
depressed all in the same breath, as if some conviction of 
innate blamelessness had checked the truth writhing within 
aim at every turn. He began by saying, in the tone in 
which a man would admit his inability to jump a twenty- 
foot wall, that he could never go home now-, and this 


LORD JIM 


73 


declaration recalled to my mind what Brierly had said, 
'that the old parson in Essex seemed to fancy his sailor 
son not a little. , 

"I can’t tell you whether Jim knew he was especially 
4 fancied/ but the tone of his references to ‘ my Dad ’ was 
calculated to give me a notion that the good old rural dean 
was about the finest man that ever had been worried by the 
cares of a large family since the beginning of the world. 
This, though never stated, was implied with an anxiety 
that there should be no mistake about it, which was really 
very true and charming, but added a poignant sense of lives 
far off to the other elements of the story. * He has seen 
it all in the home papers by this time/ said Jim. 1 1 can 
never face the poor old chap.’ I did not dare to lift my 
eyes at this till I heard him add, ' I could never explain. 
He wouldn’t understand.’ Then I looked up. He was 
smoking reflectively, and after a moment, rousing himself, 
began &o talk again. He discovered at once a desire that 
1 1 should not confound him with his partners in — in crime, 
let us^Jall it. He was not one of them ; he was altogether 
of another sort. I gave no sign of dissent. I had no inten¬ 
tion, for the sake of barren truth, to rob him of the smallest 
particle of any saving grace that would come in his way. 
I didn’t know how much of it he believed himself. I didn’t 
know what he was playing up to — if he was playing up to 
anything at all — and I suspect he did not know either; for 
it is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful 
dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge. 
I made no sound all the time he was wondering what he 
had better do after ' that stupid inquiry was over/ 

"Apparently he shared Brierly’s contemptuous opinion 
of these proceedings ordained by law.. He would not know 
wh to turn, he confessed, clearly thinking aloud rather 







74 


LORD JIM 


than talking to me. Certificate gone, career broken, no 
money to get away, no work that he could obtain as far 
as he could see. At home he could perhaps get something; 
but it meant going to his people for help, and that he would 
not do. He saw nothing for it but ship before the mast — 
could get perhaps a quartermaster’s billet in some steamer. 
Would do for a quartermaster. . . ‘ Do you think you 

would?’ I asked pitilessly. He jumped up, and going to 
the stone balustrade looked out into the night. In a moment 
he was back, towering above my chair with his youthful 
face clouded yet by the pain of a conquered emotion. He 
had understood very well I did not doubt his ability to 
steer a ship. In a voice that quavered a bit he asked me, 
* Why did I say that ? I had been “ no end kind ” to him. 
I had not even laughed at him when ’ — here he began to 
mumble—‘that mistake, you know — made a confounded 
ass of myself.’ I broke in by saying rather warmly that 
for me such a mistake was not a matter to laugh at. He 
sat down and drank deliberately some coffee, emptying the 
small cup to the last drop. ‘ That does not mean I admit 
for a moment the cap fitted,’ he declared distinctly. ‘No ? ’ 
I said. ‘No,’ he affirmed with quiet decision. ‘Do you 
know what you would have done? Do you? And you 
don’t think yourself’ ... he gulped something . . . ‘you 
don’t think yourself a — a — cur ? ’ 

“ And with this — upon my honour! — he looked up at 
me inquisitively. It was a question it appears — a bona 
fide question! However, he didn’t wait for an answer. 
Before I could recover he went on, with his eyes straight 
before him, as f reading off something written on the body 
of the night. ‘ It is all in being ready. I wasn’t; not — 
not then. I don’t want to excuse myself; but I would 
like to explain — I would like somebody to understand 


LORD JIM 


75 


— somebody — one person at least ! You ! Why not 
you ? ’ 

“It was solemn, and a little ridiculous too, as they 
always are, those struggles of an individual trying to save 
from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be, 
this precious notion of a convention, only one of the rules 
of the game, nothing more, but all the' same so terribly 
effective by its assumption of unlimited power over natural 
instincts, by the awful penalties of its failure. He began 
his story quietly enough. On board that Dale Line steamei 
that had picked up these four floating in a boat upon the 
discreet sunset glow of the sea, they had been after the 
first day looked askance upon. The fat skipper told some 
story, the others had been silent, and at first it had been 
accepted. You don’t cross-examine poor castaways you had 
the good luck to save, if not from cruel death, then at least 
from cruel suffering. Afterwards, with time to think it 
over, it might have struck the officers of the Avondale that 
there was 6 something fishy’ in the affair; but of course 
they would keep their doubts to themselves. They had 
picked up the captain, the mate, and two engineers of the 
steamer Patna sunk at sea, and that, very properly, was 
enough for them. I did not ask Jim about the nature of 
his feelings during the ten days he spent on board. From 
the way he narrated that part I was at liberty to infer he 
was partly stunned by the discovery he had made—the 
discovery about himself — and no doubt was at work trying 
to explain it away to the only man who was capable of 
appreciating all its tremendous magnitude. You must 
anderstand he did not try to minimise its importance. Of 
that I am sure; and therein lies his distinction. As to 
what sensations he experienced when he got ashore and 
heard the unforeseen conclusion of the tale in which he 


T6 


LORD JIM 


had taken such a pitiful part, he told me nothing of them, 
and it is difficult to imagine. I wonder whether he felt 
the ground cut from under his feet ? I wonder ? But no 
doubt he managed to get a fresh foothold very soon. He 
was ashore a whole fortnight waiting in the Sailors’ Home, 
and as there were six or seven men staying there at the 
time, I had heard of him a little. Their languid opinion 
seemed to be that, in addition to his other shortcomings, 
he was a sulky brute. He had passed these days on the 
verandah, buried in a long chair, and coming out of his 
place of sepulture only at meal-times or late at night, when 
he wandered on the quays all by himself, detached from 
his surroundings, irresolute and silent, like a ghost with' 
out a home to haunt. ‘I don’t think I’ve spoken three 
words to a living soul in all that time,’ he said, making 
me very sorry for him; and directly he added, ‘One of 
these fellows would have been sure to blurt out something 
I had made up my mind not to put up with, and I didn’t 
want a row. No! Not then. I was too — too ... I 
had no heart for it.’ ‘ So that bulkhead held out after all,’ 
I remarked cheerfully. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘it held. 
And yet I swear to you I felt it bulge under my hand.’ 
‘ It’s extraordinary what strains old iron will stand some¬ 
times,’ I said. Thrown back in his seat, his legs stiffly 
out and arms hanging down, he nodded slightly several 
times. You could not conceive a sadder spectacle. Sud¬ 
denly he lifted his head; he sat up; he slapped his thigh. 
‘Ah! what a chance missed! My God! what a chance 
missed! ’ he blazed out, but the ring of the last ‘ missed ’ 
resembled a cry wrung out by pain. 

“ He was silent again with a still, far-away look of fierce 
yearning after that missed distinction, with his nostrils for 
an instant dilated, sniffing the intoxicating breath of that 


LORD JIM 


T? 


wasted opportunity. If you think I was either surprised 
or shocked you do me an injustice in more ways than one! 
Ah, he was an imaginative beggar! He would give himself 
away; he would give himself up. I could see in his glance 
darted into the night all his inner being carried on, pro¬ 
jected headlong into the fanciful realm of recklessly heroic 
aspirations. He had no leisure to regret what he had lost, 
he was so wholly and naturally concerned for what he had 
failed to obtain. He was very far away from me who 
watched him across three feet of space. With every in¬ 
stant he was penetrating deeper into the impossible world 
of romantic achievements. He got to the heart of it at 
last! A strange look of beatitude overspread his features, 
his eyes sparkled in the light of the candle burning between 
us; he positively smiled! He had penetrated to the very 
heart — to the very heart. It was an ecstatic smile that 
your faces — or mine either — will never wear, my dear 
boys. I whisked him back by saying, ‘ If you had stuck to 
the ship, you mean ! 1 

“ He turned upon me, his eyes suddenly amazed and full 
of pain, with a bewildered, startled, suffering face, as though 
he had tumbled down from a star. Neither you nor I will 
ever look like this on any man. He shuddered profoundly, 
as if a cold finger-tip had touched his heart. Last of all he 
sighed. 

“ I was not in a merciful mood. He provoked one by his 
contradictory indiscretions. ‘ It is unfortunate you didn’t 
know beforehand ! 1 I said with every unkind intention; 
but the perfidious shaft fell harmless — dropped at his feet 
like a spent arrow, as it were, and he did not think of pick* 
ing it up. Perhaps he had not even seen it. Presently, 
lolling at ease, he said, ‘ Dash it all! I tell you it bulged. 
J was holding up my lamp along the angle-iron in the 


78 


LORD JIM 


lower deck when a flake of rust as big as the palm of my 
hand fell off the plate, all of itself/ He passed his hand 
over his forehead. ‘ The thing stirred and jumped off like 
something alive while I was looking at it/ ‘That made 
you feel pretty bad/ I observed casually. ‘Do you sup¬ 
pose/ he said, ‘ that I was thinking of myself, with a hun¬ 
dred and sixty people at my back, all fast asleep in that 
fore-’tween-deck alone — and more of them aft; more on 
the deck — sleeping — knowing nothing about it—three 
times as many as there were boats for, even if there had 
been time ? I expected to see the iron ojpen out as I stood 
there and the rush of water going over them as they 
lay. . . . What could I do — what?’ 

“ I can easily picture him to myself in the peopled gloom 
of the cavernous place, with the light of the globe-lamp 
falling on a small portion of the bulkhead that had the 
weight of the ocean on the other side, and the breathing of 
unconscious sleepers in his ears. I can see him glaring at 
the iron, startled by the falling rust, overburdened by the 
knowledge of an imminent death. This, I gathered, was 
the second time he had been sent forward by that skipper 
of his, who, I rather think, wanted to keep him away from 
the bridge. He told me that his first impulse was to shoui 
and straightaway make all those people leap out of sleep 
into terror; but such an overwhelming sense of his help 
lessness came over him that he was not able to produce a 
sound. This is, I suppose, what people mean by the tongue 
cleaving to the roof of the mouth. ‘ Too dry/ was the con¬ 
cise expression he used in reference to this state. Without 
a sound, then, he scrambled out on deck through the number 
one hatch. A wind-sail rigged down there swung against 
him accidentally, and he remembered that the light touch 
of the canvas on his face nearly knocked him off the hatch.' 
fray ladder 


LORD JIM 


79 


“He confessed that his knees wobbled a good deal as he 
stood on the foredeck looking at another sleeping crow i 
The engines having been stopped by that time, the steam 
was blowing off. Its deep rumble made the whole night 
vibrate like a bass string. The ship trembled to it. 

“ He saw here and there a head lifted off a mat, a vague 
form uprise in a sitting posture, listen sleepily for a moment, 
sink down again into the billowy confusion of boxes, steam- 
winches, ventilators. He was aware all these people did not 
know enough to take intelligent notice of that strange noise. 
The ship of iron, the men with white faces, all the sights, 
all the sounds, everything on board to that ignorant and 
pious multitude was strange alike, and as trustworthy as it 
would for ever jemain incomprehensible. It occurred to 
him that the fact was unfortunate. The idea of it was 
Bimply terrible. 

“You must remember he believed, as any other man 
would have done in his place, that the ship would go down 
at any moment; the bulging, rust-eaten plates that kept 
back the ocean, fatally must give way, all at once like an 
undermined dam, and let in a sudden and overwhelming 
flood. He stood still looking at these recumbent bodies, a 
doomed man aware of his fate, surveying the silent company 
of the dead. They were dead! Nothing could save them! 
There were boats enough for half of them perhaps, but 
there was no time. No time! No time! It did not seem 
worth while to open his lips, to stir hand or foot. Before 
he could shout three words, or make three steps, he would 
be floundering in a sea whitened awfully by the desperate 
struggles of human beings, clamorous with the distress of 
cries for help. There was no help. He imagined what 
would happen perfectly; he went through it all motionless 
by the hatchway with the lamp in his hand, — he went 


80 


LORD JIM 


through it to the very last harrowing detail. I think he 
went through it again while he was telling me these things 
he could not tell the court. 

“ ‘ I saw as clearly as I see you now that there was noth 
ing I could do. It seemed to take all life out of my limbs 
I thought I might just as well stand where I was and wait. 
I did not think I had many seconds. . . Suddenly the 
steam ceased blowing off. The noise, he remarked, had 
been distracting, but the silence at once became intolerably 
oppressive. 

“ ‘ I thought I would choke before I got drowned,’ he said. 

“ He protested he did not think of saving himself. The 
only distinct thought formed, vanishing, and re-forming in 
his brain, was. eight hundred people and seven boats; eight 
hundred people and seven boats. 

“‘ Somebody was speaking aloud inside my head,’ he said 
a little wildly. ‘ Eight hundred people and seven boats — 
and no time! Just think of it.’ He leaned towards me 
across the little table, and I tried to avoid his stare. ‘ Do 
you think I was afraid of death ? 9 he asked in a voice very 
fierce and low. He brought down his open hand with a bang 
that made the coffee-cups dance. ‘1 am ready to swear I was 
not — I was not. . . . By God — no!’ He hitched himself 
upright and crossed his arms; his chin fell on his breast. 

“ The soft clashes of crockery reached us faintly through 
the high windows. There was a burst of voices, and several 
men came out in high good-humour into the gallery. They 
were exchanging jocular reminiscences of the donkeys in 
Cairo. A pale anxious youth stepping softly on long legs 
was being chaffed by a strutting and rubicund globe-trotter 
about his purchases in the bazaar. ‘No, really — do you 
think I’ve been done to that extent?’ he inquired very 
earnest and deliberate. The band moved away, dropping 


LORD JIM 


81 


into chairs as they went; matches flared, illuminating for a 
second faces without the ghost of an expression and the flat 
glaze of white shirt-fronts; the hum of many conversations 
animated with the ardour of feasting sounded to me absurd 
and infinitely remote. 

“‘Some of the crew were sleeping on the number one 
hatch within reach of my arm,’ began Jim again. 

“ You must know that they kept Kalashee watch in that 
ship, all hands sleeping through the night, and only the reliefs 
of quartermasters and look-out men being called. He was 
tempted to grip and shake the shoulder of the nearest las- 
car, but he didn’t. Something held his arm down along his 
sides. He was not afraid —• oh, no! only he just couldn’t — 
that’s all. He was not afraid of death perhaps, but I’ll 
tell you what, he was afraid of the emergency. His con¬ 
founded imagination had evoked for him all the horrors 
of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams, boats 
swamped — all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea 
he had ever heard of. He might have been resigned to 
die; but I suspect he wanted to die without added terrors, 
quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance. A certain readiness 
to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom that you meet 
men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of 
resolution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last: the 
desire of peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last 
it conquers the very desire of life. Which of us here has 
not observed this, or maybe experienced something of that 
feeling in his own person — this extreme weariness of emo¬ 
tions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest? Those 
striving with unreasonable forces know it well, — the ship¬ 
wrecked castaways in boats, wanderers lost in a desert, men 
battling against the unthinking might of nature or the 
stupid brutality of crowds.” 


82 


LORD JIM 


CHAPTER VIII 

« How long he stood stock-still by the hatch expecting 
every moment to feel the ship dip under his feet and the 
rush of v ater take him at the back and toss him like a chip, 
I cannot say. Not very long — two minutes perhaps. A 
couple of men he could not make out began to converse 
drowsily, and also, he could not tell where, he detected a 
curious noise of shuffling feet. Above these faint sounds 
there was that awful stillness preceding a catastrophe, that 
trying silence of the moment before the crash; then it came 
into his head that perhaps he would have time to rush 
along and cut all the lanyards of the gripes, so that the 
boats would float off as the ship went down. 

“ The Patna had a long bridge, and all the boats were up 
there, four on one side and three on the other — the smallest* 
of them on the port side and nearly abreast of the steering 
gear. He assured me, with evident anxiety to be believed, 
that he had been most careful to keep them ready for in¬ 
stant service. He knew his duty. I daresay he was a good 
enough mate as far as that went. ‘ I always believed in be¬ 
ing prepared for the worst,’ he continued, staring anxiously 
in my face. I nodded my approval of the sound principle, 
averting my eyes before the subtle unsoundness of the man. 

“ He started unsteadily to run. He had to step over legs, 
avoid stumbling against the heads. Suddenly some one 
caught hold of his coat from below, and a distressed voice 
spoke under his elbow. The light of the lamp he carried 
m his right hand fell upon an upturned dark face whose 
eyes entreated him together with the voice. He had picked 
up enough of the language to understand the word water, 
repeated several times in a tone of insistence, of prayer. 


LORD JIM 


S3 


almost of despair. He gave a jerk to get away, and felt an 
arm embrace his leg. 

“ 1 The beggar clung to me like a drowning man/ he said 
impressively. ‘ Water, water! What water did he mean ? 
What did he know ? As calmly as I could I ordered him 
to let go. He was stopping me, time was pressing, other 
men began to stir; I wanted time — time to cut the boats 
adrift. He got hold of my hand now, and I felt that he 
would begin to shout. It flashed upon me it was enough to 
start a panic, and I hauled off with my free arm and slung 
the lamp in his face. The glass jingled, the light went out, 
but the blow made him let go, and I ran off — I wanted to 
get at the boats; I wanted to get at the boats. He leaped 
after me from behind. I turned on him. He would not 
keep quiet; he tried to shout; I had half throttled him be¬ 
fore I made out what he wanted. He wanted some water — 
water to drink; they were on strict allowance, you know, 
and he had with him a young boy I had noticed several 
times. His child was sick — and thirsty. He had caught 
sight of me as I passed by, and was begging for a little 
water. That’s all. We were under the bridge, in the dark. 
He kept on snatching at my wrists; there was no getting rid 
of him. I dashed into my berth, grabbed my water-bottle, 
and thrust it into his hands. He vanished. I didn’t find 
out till then how much I was in want of a drink myself.’ 
He leaned on one elbow with a hand over his eyes. 

I felt a creepy sensation all down my backbone; there 
was something peculiar in all this. The fingers of the hand 
that shaded his brow trembled slightly. He broke the 
short silence. 

“ ‘ These things happen only once to a man and . . Ah ! 
well! When I got on the bridge at last the beggars were 
getting one of the boats off the chocks. A boat! I was 


84 


LORD JIM 


running up the ladder when a heavy blow fell on my 
shoulder, just missing my head. It didn’t stop me, and the 
chief engineer — they had got him out of his bunk by then 
— raised the boat-stretcher again. Somehow I had no mind 
to be surprised at anything. All this seemed natural — and 
awful — and awful. I dodged that miserable maniac, lifted 
him off the deck as though he had been a little child, and 
he started whispering in my arms: “Don’t! don’t! I 
thought you were one of them niggers.” I flung him away, 
he skidded along the bridge and knocked the legs from 
under the little chap — the second. The skipper, busy 
about the boat, looked round and came at me head down, 
growling like a wild beast. I flinched no more than a stone. 
I was as solid standing there as this,’ he tapped lightly with 
his knuckles the wall beside his chair. f It was as though I 
had heard it all, seen it all, gone through it all twenty times 
already. I wasn’t afraid of them. I drew back my fist, 
and he stopped short, muttering — 

u 1 “ Ah! it’s you. Lend a hand quick.” 

“‘ That’s what he said. Quick! As if anybody could be 
quick enough. Aren’t you going to do something ? ’ I asked. 
* “ Yes. Clear out,” he snarled over his shoulder. 

“ * I don’t think I understood then what he meant. The 
other two had picked themselves up by that time, and they 
rushed together to the boat. They tramped, they wheezed, 
they shoved, they cursed the boat, the ship, each other — 
cursed me. All in mutters. I didn’t move, I didn’t speak. 
I watched the slant of the ship. She was as still as if 
landed on the blocks in a dry dock — only she was like 
this.’ He held up his hand, palm under, the tips of the 
fingers inclined downwards. ‘ Like this,’ he repeated. ‘ I 
could see the line of the horizon before me, as clear as a 
bell, above her stem-head; I could see the water far off 


LORD JIM 


85 


there black and sparkling, and still — still as a pond, deadly 
still, more still than ever sea was before — more still than I 
could bear to look at. Have you watched a ship floating 
head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old iron too 
rotten to stand being shored up? Have you? Oh, yes, 
shored up ? I thought of that — I thought of every mortal 
thing; but can you shore up a bulkhead in five minutes — or 
in fifty for that matter ? Where was I going to get men 
that would go down below ? And the timber — the timber! 
Would you have had the courage to swing the maul for 
the first blow if you had seen that bulkhead ? Don’t say 
you would: you had not seen it; nobody would. Hang it 

— to do a thing like that you must believe there is a 
chance, one in a thousand at least, some ghost of a chance; 
and you would not have believed. Nobody would have 
believed. You think me a cur for standing there, but what 
would you have done? What! You can’t tell — nobody 
can tell. One must have time to turn round. What would 
you have me do ? Where was the kindness in making crazy 
with fright all those people I could not save single-handed 

— that nothing could save ? Look here! As true as I sit 
on this chair before you . . 

“He drew quick breaths at every few words and shot 
quick glances at my face, as though in his anguish he were 
watchful of the effect. He was not speaking to me, he was 
only speaking before me, in a dispute with an invisible per¬ 
sonality, an antagonistic and inseparable partner of his ex¬ 
istence— another possessor of his soul. These were issues 
beyond the competency of a court of inquiry: it was a 
subtle and momentous quarrel as to the true essence of life, 
and did not want a judge. He wanted an ally, a helper, an 
accomplice. I felt the risk I ran of being circumvented, 
blinded, decoyed, bullied perhaps, into taking a definite 


£6 


LORD JIM 


part in a dispute impossible of decision if one had to be fait 
to all the phantoms in possession — to the reputable that had 
its claims and to the disreputable that had its exigencies 
I can’t explain to you who haven’t seen him and who hear 
his words only at second hand the mixed nature of my 
feelings. It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend 
the Inconceivable — and I know of nothing to compare with 
the discomfort of such a sensation. I was made to look at 
the convention that lurks in all truth and on the essentia/ 
sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to all sides at once,— 
to the side turned perpetually to the light of day, and to 
that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the 
moon, exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a 
fearful ashy light falling at times on the edge. He swayed 
me. I own to it, I own up. The occasion was obscure, in¬ 
significant — what you will: a lost youngster, one in a mill¬ 
ion — but then he was one of us; an incident as completely 
devoid of importance as the flooding of an ant-heap, and 
yet the mystery of his attitude got hold of me as though 
he had been an individual in the forefront of his kind, as 
if the obscure truth involved were momentous enough to 
affect mankind’s conception of itself. . . .” 

Marlow paused to put new life into his expiring cherooh 
seemed to forget all about the story, and abruptly began 
again. 

“ My fault, of course. One has no business really to get 
interested. It’s a weakness of mine. His was of another 
kind. My weakness consists in not having a discriminating 
eye for the incidental — for the externals, — no eye for the 
hod of the ragpicker or the fine linen of the next man. 
Next man — that’s it. I have met so many men,” he pur¬ 
sued, with momentary sadness — “met them too with a 
certain — certain — impact, let us say ; like this fellow, f 0 * 


LORD JIM 


87 


instance — and in each case all I could see was merely the 
human being. A confounded democratic quality of vision 
which may be better than total blindness, but has been of 
no advantage to me — I can assure you. Men expect one 
to take into account their fine linen. But I never could 
get up any enthusiasm about these things. Oh ! it’s a fail¬ 
ing ; it’s a failing; and then comes a soft evening; a lot of 
men too indolent for whist — and a story. ...” 

He paused again to wait for an encouraging remark, per¬ 
haps, but nobody spoke; only the host, as if reluctantly 
performing a duty, murmured — 

“ You are so subtle, Marlow.” 

“ Who ? I ? ” said Marlow in a low voice. “ Oh, no! 
But he was; and try as I may for the success of this yarn I 
am missing innumerable shades — they were so fine, so diffi¬ 
cult to render in colourless words. Because he complicated 
matters by being so simple, too — the simplest poor devil! 
. . . By Jove! he was amazing. There he sat telling 
me that just as I saw him before my eyes he wouldn’t be 
afraid to face anything — and believing in it too. I tell 
you it was fabulously innocent and it was enormous, enor¬ 
mous ! I watched him covertly, just as though I had sus¬ 
pected him of an intention to take a jolty good rise out of 
me. He was confident that, on the square, ‘ on the square, 
mind !’ there was nothing he couldn’t meet. Ever since he 
had been ‘ so high ’ — ‘ quite a little chap,’ he had been pre¬ 
paring himself for all the difficulties that can beset one on 
land and water. He confessed proudly to this kind of fore' 
sight. He had been elaborating dangers and defences, 
expecting the worst, rehearsing his best. He must have 
led a most exalted existence. Can you fancy it? A suc¬ 
cession of adventures, so much glory, such a victorious 
progress! and the deep sense of his sagacity crowning 


88 


LORD JIM 


every day of his inner life. He forgot himself; his ey©» 
shone; and with every word my heart, searched by the 
light of his absurdity, was growing heavier in my breast. 
I had no mind to laugh, and lest I should smile I made for 
myself a stolid face. He gave signs of irritation. 

‘“It is always the unexpected that happens/ I said in 
a propitiatory tone. My obtuseness provoked him into a 
contemptuous ‘ Pshaw! ’ I suppose he meant that the 
unexpected couldn’t touch him; nothing less than the 
unconceivable itself could get over his perfect state of 
preparation. He had been taken unawares — and he whis¬ 
pered to himself a malediction upon the waters and the 
firmament, upon the ship, upon the men. Everything had 
betrayed him! He had been tricked into that sort of high- 
minded resignation which prevented him lifting as much as 
his little finger, while these others who had a very clear 
perception of the actual necessity were tumbling against 
each other and sweating desperately over that boat business. 
Something had gone wrong there at the last moment. It 
appears that in their flurry they had contrived in some 
mysterious way to get the sliding bolt of the foremost boat- 
chock jammed tight, and forthwith had gone out of the 
remnants of their minds over the deadly nature of that 
accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce 
industry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that 
floated quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting 
against time for the freeing of that boat, grovelling on 
all-fours, standing up in despair, tugging, pushing, snarling 
at each other venomously, ready to kill, ready to weep, and 
only kept from flying at each other’s throats by the fear of 
death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and 
cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh, yes! It must have been a 
pretty sight. He saw it all, he could talk about it with 


LORD JIM 


89 


scorn and bitterness; he had a minute knowledge of it by 
means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because he swore to 
me he had remained apart without a glance at them and at 
the boat — without one single glance. And I believe him. 
I should think he was too busy watching the threatening 
slant of the ship, the suspended menace discovered in the 
midst of the most perfect security — fascinated by the 
sword hanging by a hair over his imaginative head. 

"Nothing in the world moved before his eyes, and he 
could depict to himself without hindrance the sudden swing 
upwards of the dark sky-line, the sudden tilt-up of the vast 
plain of the sea, the swift, still rise, the brutal fling, ths 
grasp of the abyss, the struggle without hope, the starlight 
closing over his head for ever like the vault of a tomb — 
the revolt of his young life — the black end. He could! 
By Jove! who couldn’t ? And you must remember he was 
a finished artist in that peculiar way, he was a gifted poor 
devil with the faculty of swift and forestalling vision. 
The sights it showed him had turned him into cold stone 
from the soles of his feet to the nape of his neck; but there 
was a hot dance of thoughts in his head, a dance of lame, 
blind, mute thoughts — a whirl of awful cripples. Didn’t I 
tell you he confessed himself before me as though I had the 
power to bind and to loose. He burrowed deep, deep, in 
the hope of my absolution, which would have been of no 
good to him. This was one of these cases which no solemn 
deception can palliate, where no man can help; where his 
very Maker seems to abandon a sinner to his own devices. 

“ He stood on the starboard side of the bridge, as far as 
he could get from the struggle for the boat, which went on 
with the agitation of madness and the stealthiness of a con¬ 
spiracy. The two Malays had meantime remained holding 
to the wheel. Just picture to yourselves the actors in that, 


90 


LORD JIM 


thank God! unique episode of the sea, four beside them- 
selves with fierce and secret exertions, and three looking on 
in complete immobility, above the awnings covering the 
profound ignorance of hundreds of human beings, with their 
weariness, with their dreams, with their hopes, arrested, 
held by an invisible hand on the brink of annihilation. 
For that they were so, makes no doubt to me: given the 
state of the ship, this was the deadliest possible description 
of accident that could happen. These beggars by the boat 
had every reason to go distracted with funk. Frankly, had 
I been there, I would not have given as much as a counter¬ 
feit farthing for the ship’s chance to keep above water to 
the end of each successive second. And still she floated 1 
These sleeping pilgrims were destined to accomplish their 
whole pilgrimage to the bitterness of some other end. It 
was as if the Omnipotence whose mercy they confessed had 
needed their humble testimony on earth for a while longer, 
and had looked down to make a sign, ‘Thou shalt not!’ to 
the ocean. Their escape would trouble me as a prodigi¬ 
ously inexplicable event, did I not know how tough old iron 
can be — as tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we 
meet now and then, worn to a shadow and breasting the 
weight of life. Not the least wonder of these twenty min¬ 
utes, to my mind, is the behaviour of the two helmsmen 
They were amongst the native batch of all sorts brought 
over from Aden to give evidence at the inquiry. One of 
them, labouring under intense bashfulness, Avas very young, 
and Avith his smooth, yelloAv, cheery countenance looked 
even younger than he was. I remember perfectly Brierly 
asking him, through the interpreter, what he thought of it 
at the time, and the interpreter, after a short colloquy, 
turning to the court with an important air — 

“ 1 He says he thought nothing.’ 


LORD JIM 


91 


“The other, with patient blinking eyes, a blue cotton 
handkerchief, faded with much washing, bound with a 
smart twist over a lot of grey wisps, his face shrunken into 
grim hollows, his brown skin made darker by a mesh of 
wrinkles, explained that he had a knowledge of some evil 
thing befalling the ship, but there had been no order; he 
could not remember an order; why should he leave the 
helm ? To some further questions he jerked back his spare 
shoulders, and declared it never came into his mind then 
that the white men were about to leave the ship through 
fear of death. He did not believe it now. There might 
have been secret reasons. He wagged his old chin know¬ 
ingly. Aha! secret reasons. He was a man of great ex¬ 
perience, and he wanted that white Tuan to know — he 
turned towards Brierly, who didn’t raise his head—that he 
had acquired a knowledge of many things by serving white 
men on the sea for a great number of years — and, sud¬ 
denly, with shaky excitement he poured upon our spell¬ 
bound attention a lot of queer-sounding names, names of 
dead-and-gone skippers, names of forgotten country ships, 
names of familiar and distorted sound, as if the hand of 
dumb time had been at work on them for ages. They 
stopped him at last. A silence fell upon the court, — a 
silence that remained unbroken for at least a minute, and 
passed gently into a deep murmur. This episode was the 
sensation of the second day’s proceedings—affecting all the 
audience, affecting everybody except Jim, who was sitting 
moodily at the end of the first bench, and never looked up 
at this extraordinary and damning witness that seemed 
possessed of some mysterious theory of defence. 

“So these two lascars stuck to the helm of that ship 
without steerageway, where death would have found them 
if such b^l been their destiny. The whites did uot give 


92 


LORD JIM 


them half a glance, had probably forgotten their existence. 
Assuredly Jim did not remember it. He remembered he 
could do nothing; he could do nothing, now he was alone. 
There was nothing to do but to sink with the ship. No 
use making a disturbance about it. Was there? He 
waited upstanding, without a sound, stiffened in the idea 
of some sort of heroic discretion. The first engineer ran 
cautiously across the bridge to tug at his sleeve. 

“ 1 Come and help! For God’s sake, come and help! ’ 

“ He ran back to the boat on the points of his toes, and 
returned directly to worry at his sleeve, begging and curs¬ 
ing at the same time. 

“ ‘ I believe he would have kissed my hands,’ said Jim, 
savagely, ‘ and, next moment, he starts foaming and whis¬ 
pering in my face, “ If I had the time I would like to crack 
your skull for you.” I pushed him away. Suddenly he 
caught hold of me round the neck. Damn him! I hit 
him. I hit out without looking. “ Won’t you save your 
own life — you infernal coward,” he sobs. Coward! He 
called me an infernal coward! Ha! ha! ha! ha! He 
called me — ha! ha! ha! . . .’ 

“He had thrown himself back and was shaking with 
laughter. I had never in my life heard anything so bitter 
as that noise. It fell like a blight on all the merriment 
about donkeys, pyramids, bazaars, or what not. Along the 
whole dim length of the gallery the voices dropped, the 
pale blotches of faces turned our way with one accord, and 
the silence became so profound that the clear tinkle of a 
teaspoon falling on the tessellated floor of the verandah 
rang out like a tiny and silvery scream. 

“‘You mustn’t laugh like this, with all these people 
about,’ I remonstrated. ‘ It isn’t nice for them, you know.* 
“ He gave no sign of having heard at first, but after 9 


LORD JIM 


93 


while, with a stare that, missing me altogether, seemed to 
probe the heart of some awful vision, he muttered care¬ 
lessly— ‘Oh! they’ll think I am drunk.’ 

“ And after that you would have thought from his 
appearance he would never make a sound again. But — 
no fear! He could no more stop telling now than he could 
have stopped living by the mere exertion of his will.” 


CHAPTER IX 

“ ( I was saying to myself, “ Sink — curse you! Sink! 99 9 
These were the words with which he began again. He 
wanted it over. He was severely left alone, and he formu¬ 
lated in his head this address to the ship in a tone of 
imprecation, while at the same time he enjoyed the privilege 
of witnessing scenes — as far as I can judge — of low 
comedy. They were still at that bolt. The skipper was 
ordering. ‘ Get under and try to lift ’; and the others 
naturally shirked. You understand that to be squeezed 
flat under the keel of a boat wasn’t a desirable position to 
be caught in if the ship went down suddenly. ‘ Why don’t 
you — you the strongest?’ whined the little engineer. 
1 Gott-for-dam! I am too thick,’ spluttered the skipper in 
despair. It was funny enough to make angels weep. They 
stood idle for a moment, and suddenly the chief engineer 
rushed again at Jim. 

“ ‘ Come and help, man! Are you mad to throw your 
only chance away ? Come and help, man! Man! Look 
there — look! ’ 

“ And at last Jim looked astern where the other pointed 
with maniacal insistence. He saw a silent black squall 



LORD JIM 


94 

which had eaten up already one-third of the sky. You 
know how these squalls come up there about that time of 
the year. First you see a darkening of the horizon — no 
more; then a cloud rises opaque like a wall. A straigh 
edge of vapour lined with sickly whitish gleams flies up 
from the southwest, swallowing the stars in whole constel 
lations; its shadow flies over the waters, and confounds sea 
and sky into one abyss of obscurity. And all is still. No 
thunder, no wind, no sound; not a flicker of lightning. 
Then in the tenebrous immensity a livid arch appears; a 
swell or two like undulations of the very darkness run past, 
and suddenly, wind and rain strike together with a peculiar 
impetuosity as if they had burst through something solid. 
Such a cloud had come up while they weren’t looking. They 
had just noticed it, and were perfectly justified in surmising 
that if in absolute stillness there was some chance for the 
ship to keep afloat a few minutes longer, the least disturb¬ 
ance of the sea would make an end of her instantly. Her 
first nod to the swell that precedes the burst of such a 
squall would be also her last, would become a plunge, 
would, so to speak, be prolonged into a long dive, down, 
down to the bottom. Hence, these new capers of their 
fright, these new antics in which they displayed their 
aversion to die. 

“ ‘ It was black, black,’ pursued Jim with moody steadi¬ 
ness. ‘ It had sneaked upon us from behind. The infernal 
thing! I suppose there had been at the back of my head 
some hope yet. I don’t know. But that was all over any¬ 
how. It maddened me to see myself caught like this. I 
was angry, as though I had been trapped. I was trapped/ 
The night was hot, too, I remember. Not a breath of air.’ 

“ He remembered so well that, gasping in the chair, he 
seemed to sweat and choke before my eyes. No doubt it 


LOKD JIM 


95 


maddened him; it knocked him over afresh, — in a manner 
of speaking, — but it made him also remember that impor¬ 
tant purpose which had sent him rushing on that bridge 
only to slip clean out of his mind. He had intended to cut 
the life-boats clear of the ship. He whipped out his knife 
and went to work slashing as though he had seen nothing, 
had heard nothing, had known of no one on board. They 
thought him hopelessly wrong-headed and crazy, but dared 
not protest noisily against this useless loss of time. When 
he had done he returned to the very same spot from which 
he had started. The chief was there, ready with a clutch 
at him to whisper close to his head, scathingly, as though 
he wanted to bite his ear — 

You silly fool! do you think you’ll get the ghost of a 
show when all that lot of brutes is in the water ? Why, 
they will batter your head for you from these boats.’ 

“He wrung his hands, ignored, at Jim’s elbow. The 
skipper kept up a nervous shuffle in one place and mumbled, 
k Hammer ! hammer! Mein Gott! Get a hammer/ 

“ The little engineer whimpered like a child, but, uroken 
arm and all, he turned out the least craven of the lot as it 
seems, and, actually, mustered enough pluck to run an 
errand to the engine-room. No trifle, it must be owned 
in fairness to him. Jim told me he darted desperate looks 
like a cornered man, gave one low wail, and dashed off. 
He was back instantly, clambering, hammer in hand, and 
without a pause flung himself at the bolt. The others gave 
up Jim at once and ran off to assist. He heard the tap, 
tap, of the hammer, the sound of the released chock falling 
over. The boat was clear. Only then he turned to look — 
only then. But he kept his distance — he kept his dis¬ 
tance. He wanted me to know he had kept his distance; 
that there was nothing in common between him and these 


96 


LORD JIM 


men — who had the hammer. Nothing whatever. It Is 
more than probable he thought himself cut off from them 
by a space that could not be traversed, by an obstacle that 
could not be overcome, by a chasm without bottom. He 
was as far as he could get from them — the whole breadth 
of the ship. 

“ His feet were glued to that remote spot and his eyes to 
their indistinct group bowed together and swaying strangely 
in the common torment of fear. A hand lamp lashed to a 
stanchion above a little table rigged up on the bridge — the 
Patna had no chart-room amidships — threw a light on 
their labouring shoulders, on their arched and bobbing 
backs. They pushed at the bow of the boat; they pushed 
out into the night; they pushed, and would no more look 
back at him. They had given him up as if indeed he had 
been too far, too hopelessly separated from themselves, to 
be worth an appealing word, a glance, or a sign. They had 
no leisure to look back upon his passive heroism, to feel 
the sting of his abstention. The boat was heavy; they 
pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for an encourag¬ 
ing word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their 
self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their 
desperate exertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit 
for knockabout clowns in a farce. They pushed with their 
hands, with their heads, they pushed for dear life with all 
the weight of their bodies, they pushed with all the might 
of their souls — only no sooner had they succeeded in 
canting the stem clear of the davit than they would leave 
off like one man and start a wild scramble into her. As 
a natural consequence the boat would swing in abruptly, 
driving them back, helpless and jostling against each other. 
They would stand nonplussed for a while, exchanging in 
fierce whispers all the infamous names they could call 


LORD JIM 


97 


to mind, and go at it again. Three times this occurred. 
He described it to me with morose thoughtfulness. He 
hadn’t lost a single movement of that comic business. 1 1 
loathed them. I hated them. I had to look at all that/ he 
said without emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely watch¬ 
ful glance. 1 Was ever there any one so shamefully tried! ’ 

“ He took his head in his hands for a moment, like a man 
driven to distraction by some unspeakable outrage. These 
were things he could not explain to the court — and not 
even to me; but I would have been little fitted for the recep¬ 
tion of his confidences had I not been able at times to under¬ 
stand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon 
his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful 
and vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in 
his ordeal — a degradation of funny grimaces in the ap¬ 
proach of death or dishonour. 

“ He related facts which I have not forgotten, but at this 
distance of time I couldn’t recall his very words: I only 
remember that he managed wonderfully to convey the brood¬ 
ing rancour of his mind into the bare recital of events. 
Twice, he told me, he shut his eyes in the certitude that 
the end was upon him already, and twice he had to open 
them again. Each time he noted the darkening of the 
great stillness. The shadow of the silent cloud had fallen 
upon the ship from the zenith, and seemed to have extin¬ 
guished every sound of her teeming life. He could no 
longer hear the voices under the awnings. He told me that 
each time he closed his eyes a flash of thought showed him 
that crowd of bodies, laid out for death, as plain as day¬ 
light. When he opened them, it was to see the dim strug¬ 
gle of four men fighting like mad with a stubborn boat. 
‘They would fall back before it time after time, stand 
swearing at each other, and suddenly make another rush in 


98 


LORD JIM 


a bunch. . . . Enough to make you die laugrnng,’ he com- 
mented with downcast eyes; then raising them for a mo- 
ment to my face with a dismal smile, ‘ I ought to have a 
merry life of it, by God! for I shall see that funny sight a 
good many times yet before I die/ His eyes fell again. 
‘ See and hear. . . . See and hear,’ he repeated twice, at 
long intervals, filled by vacant staring. 

“ He roused himself. 

“ ‘ I made up my mind to keep my eyes shut/ he said, 
1 and I couldn’t. I couldn’t, and I don’t care who knows it 
Let them go through that kind of thing before they talk. 
Just let them — and do better — that’s all. The second 
time my eyelids flew open and my mouth too. I had felt 
the ship move. She just dipped her bows — and lifted them 
gently — and slow! everlastingly slow; and ever so little. 
She hadn’t done that much for days. The cloud had raced 
ahead, and this first swell seemed to travel upon a sea of 
lead. There was no life in that stir. It managed, though, 
to knock over something in my head. What would you 
have done ? You are sure of yourself — aren’t you ? 
What would you do if you felt now — this minute — the 
house here move, just move a little under your chair. 
Leap! By heavens! you would take one spring from 
where you sit and land in that clump of bushes yonder. 

“ He flung his arm out at the night beyond the stone bal¬ 
ustrade. I held my peace. He looked at me very steadily, 
very severe. There could be no mistake: I was being 
bullied now, and it behoved me to make no sign lest by a 
gesture or a word I should be drawn into a fatal admission 
about myself which would have some bearing on the case 
I was not disposed to take any risk of that sort. Don’t 
forget I had him before me, and really he was too much 
like one of us not to be dangerous.* But if you want t a 


LORD JIM 


99 


fcnow, I don’t mind telling you that I did, with a rapid 
glance, estimate the distance to the mass of denser blackness 
in the middle of the grass plot before the verandah. He 
exaggerated. I would have landed short by several feet — 
and that’s the only thing of which I am fairly certain. 

“ The last moment had come, as he thought, and he did 
not move. His feet remained glued to the planks, if his 
thoughts were knocking about loose in his head. It was at 
this moment too that he saw one of the men around the 
boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the air with raised 
arms, totter and collapse. He didn’t exactly fall, he only 
slid gently into a sitting posture, all hunched up, and with 
his shoulders propped against the side of the engine-room 
skylight. 4 That was the donkey-man. A haggard, -white- 
faced chap with a ragged moustache. Acted third en¬ 
gineer,’ he explained. 

“‘Dead,’ I said. We had heard something of that iu 
court. 

“ ‘ So they say,’ he pronounced with sombre indifference 
< Of course I never knew. Weak heart. The man had been 
complaining of being out of sorts for some time before. 
Excitement. Over-exertion. Devil only knows. Ha! ha! 
ha! It v'as easy to see he did not want to die either. 
Droll, isn’t it? May I be shot if he hadn’t been fooled 
into killing himself! Fooled — neither more or less. 
Fooled into it, by heavens! just as I ... Ah! If he 
had only kept still; if he had only told them to go to the 
devil when they came to rush him out of his bunk because 
the ship was sinking! If he had only stood by with his 
hands in his pockets and called them names!’ 

“ He got up, shook his fist, glared at me, and sat down. 

“ ‘ A chance missed, eh ? ’ I murmured. 

«< Why don’t you laugh ? ’ he said. ‘ A joke hatched in 


100 


LORD JIM 


hell. Weak heart! . . I wish sometimes mine had 
been/ 

“ This irritated me. ‘ Do you ?’ I exclaimed with deep- 
rooted irony. * Yes! Can’t you understand? ’ he cried. ‘ I 
don’t know what more you could wish for,’ I said angrily. 
He gave me an utterly uncomprehending glance. This 
shaft had also gone wide of the mark, and he was not the 
man to bother about stray arrows. Upon my word, he was 
too unsuspecting; he was not fair game. I was glad that 
my missile had been thrown away, — that he had not even 
heard the twang of the bow. 

“ Of course he could not know at the time the man was 
dead. The next minute — his last on board — was crowded 
with a tumult of events and sensations which beat about 
him like the sea upon a rock. I use the simile advisedly, 
because from his relation I am forced to believe he had 
preserved through it all a strange illusion of passiveness, 
as though he had not acted but had suffered himself to be 
handled by the infernal powers who had selected him for 
the victim of their practical joke. The first thing that 
came to him was the grinding surge of the heavy davits 
swinging out at last — a jar which seemed to enter his 
body from the deck through the soles of his feet, and 
travel up his spine to the crown of his head. Then, th8 
squall being very near now, another and a heavier swell 
lifted the passive hull in a threatening heave that checked 
his breath, while his brain and his heart together were 
pierced as with daggers by panic-stricken screams. ‘Let 
go! For God’s sake, let go! Let go ! She’s going.’ Fol¬ 
lowing upon that the boat-falls ripped through the blocks, 
and a lot of men began to talk in startled tones under the 
awnings. ‘ When these beggars did break out, their yelps 
were enough to wake the dead,’ he said. 'Next, after the 


LORD JIM 


101 


splashing shock of the boat literally dropped in the water, 
came the hollow noises of stamping and tumbling in her, 
mingled with confused shouts: ‘ Unhook! Unhook! Shove! 
Unhook! Shove for your life! Here’s the squall down on 
us. . . He heard, high above his head, the faint mut¬ 
tering of the wind; he heard below his feet a cry of pain. 
A lost voice alongside started cursing a swivel-hook. The 
Ship began to buzz fore and aft like a disturbed hive, and, 
as quietly as he was telling me of all this — because just 
then he was very quiet in attitude, in face, in voice — he 
went on to say without the slightest warning as it were, 
‘I stumbled over his legs.’ 

“ This was the first I heard of his having moved at all. 
I could not restrain a grunt of surprise. Something had 
started him off at last, but of the exact moment, of the 
cause that tore him out of his immobility, he knew no 
more than the uprooted tree knows of the wind that laid 
it low. All this had come to him: the sounds, the sights, 
the legs of the dead man — by Jove! The infernal joke 
was being crammed devilishly down his throat, but — 
look you — he was not going to admit of any sort of 
swallowing motion in his gullet. It’s extraordinary 
how he could cast upon you the spirit of his illusion. I 
listened as if to a tale of black magic at work upon a 
corpse. 

“‘He went over sideways, very gently, and this is the 
last thing I remember seeing on board,’ he continued. ‘ I 
did not care what he did. It looked as though he were 
picking himself up. I thought he was picking himself up 
of course: I expected him to bolt past me over the rail 
and drop into the boat after the others. I could hear them 
knocking about down there, and a voice as if crying up a 
shaft called out “George.” Then three voices together 


102 


LORD JIM 


raised a yell. They came to me separately: one bleated, 
another screamed, one howled. Ough ! ’ 

“ He shivered a little, and I beheld him rise slowly as if 
a steady hand from above had been pulling him out of the 
chair by his hair. Up, slowly — to his full height, and 
when his knees had locked stiff the hand let him go, and 
he swayed a little on his feet. There was a suggestion of 
awful stillness in his face, in his movements, in his very, 
voice when he said ‘They shouted’— and involuntarily I 
pricked up my ears for the ghost of that shout that would 
be heard directly through the false effect of silence 
There were eight hundred people in that ship/ he said, im¬ 
paling me to the back of my seat with an awful blank stare. 

‘ Eight hundred living people, and they were yelling after 
the one dead man to come down and be saved. “Jump, 
George ! Jump! Oh, jump! ” I stood by with my hand on 
the davit. I was very quiet. It had come over pitch dark. 
You could see neither sky nor sea. I heard the boat along¬ 
side go bump, bump, and not another sound down there for 
a while, but the ship under me was full of talking noises. 
Suddenly the skipper howled, “Mein Gott! The squall! 
The squall! Shove off! ” With the first hiss of rain, and 
the first gust of wind, they screamed, “ Jump, George ? 
We’ll catch you! Jump ! ” The ship began a slow plunge ; 
the rain swept over her like a broken sea; my cap flew off 
my head; my breath was driven back into my throat. I 
heard as if I had been on the top of a tower another wild 
screech, “ Geo-o-o-rge! Oh, jump! ” She was going down, 
down, head first under me. . . . 9 

“ He raised his hand deliberately to his face, and made 
picking motions with his fingers as though he had been 
bothered with cobwebs, and afterwards he looked into the 
spen palm for quite half a second before he blurted out — 


LORD JIM 


103 


“ 1 1 had jumped . . .’ He checked himself, averted his 
^aze. ... ( It seems/ he added. 

“His clear bine eyes turned to me with a piteous stare, 
and looking at him standing before me, dumfounded and 
hurt, I was oppressed by a sad sense of resigned wisdom, 
mingled with the amused and profound pity of an old man 
helpless before a childish disaster. 

“ ‘ Looks like it/ I muttered. 

“ ‘ I knew nothing about it till I looked up/ he explained 
hastily. And that’s possible too. You had to listen to 
him as you would to a small boy in trouble. He didn’t 
know. It had happened somehow. It would never happen 
again. He had landed partly on somebody and fallen across 
a thwart. He felt as though all his ribs on his left side must 
be broken; then he rolled over, and saw vaguely the ship 
he had deserted uprising above him, with the red side-light 
glowing large in the rain like a fire on the brow of a hill 
seen through a mist. ‘ She seemed higher than a wall; she 
loomed like a cliff over the boat, ... I wished I could die/ 
he cried. 1 There was no going back. It was as if I had 
jumped into a well — into an everlasting deep hole. . . . 


CHAPTER X 

“ He locked his fingers together and tore them apart. Noth- 
ing could be more true : he had indeed jumped into an ever¬ 
lasting deep hole. He had tumbled from a height he could 
never scale again. By that time the boat had gone driving 
forward past the bows. It was too dark just then for them 
to see each other, and, moreover, they were blinded and 
half drowned with rain. He told me it was like being 
swept by a flood through a cavern. They turned their backs 



104 


LORD JIM 


to the squall; the skipper, it seems, got an oar over the 
stern to keep the boat before it, and for two or three minutes 
the end of the world had come through the deluge in a 
pitchy blackness. The sea hissed ‘like twenty thousand 
kettles. , That’s his simile, not mine. I fancy there was 
not much wind after the first gust; and he himself had ad¬ 
mitted at the inquiry that the sea never got up that night 
to any extent. He crouched down in the bows and stole a 
furtive glance back. He saw just one yellow gleam of the 
masthead light high up and blurred like a last star ready 
to dissolve. ( It terrified me to see it still there,’ he said. 
That’s what he said. What terrified him was the thought 
that the drowning was not over yet. No doubt he wanted 
to be done with the abomination as quickly as possible. 
Nobody in the boat made a sound, in the dark she seemed 
to fly, but of course she could not have had much way. 
Then the shower swept ahead, and the great, distracting, 
hissing noise followed the rain into distance and died out. 
There was nothing to be heard then but the slight wash 
about the boat’s sides. Somebody’s teeth were chattering 
violently. A hand touched his back. A faint voice said, 
* You there ? ’ Another cried put shakily, ‘ She’s gone! ’ 
and they all stood up together to look astern. They saw no 
lights. All was black. A thin cold drizzle was driving 
into their faces. The boat lurched slightly. The teeth 
chattered faster, stopped, and began again twice before the 
man could master his shiver sufficiently to say, ‘ Ju-ju-st in 
ti-ti-me. . . . Brrrr.’ He recognised the voice of the chief 
engineer saying surlily, < I saw her go down. I happened to 
turn my head.’ The wind had dropped almost completely. 

“ They watched in the dark with their heads half turned 
to windward as if expecting to hear cries. At first he was 
thankful the night had covered up the scene before his eyes 


LORD JIM 


105 


and then to know of it and yet to have seen and heard noth* 
ing appeared somehow the culminating point of an awful 
misfortune. ‘ Strange, isn’t it ? ’ he murmured, interrupting 
himself in his disjointed narrative. 

“ It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had 
an unconscious conviction that the reality could not be half 
as bad, not half as anguishing, appalling, and vengeful as 
the created terror of his imagination. I believe that, in this 
first moment, his heart was wrung with all the suffering, 
that his soul knew the accumulated savour of all the fear, 
all the horror, all the despair of eight hundred human be¬ 
ings pounced upon in the night by a sudden and violent 
death, else why should he have said, ‘ It seemed to me that 
I must jump out of that accursed boat and swim back to 
see — half a mile — more — any distance — to the very 
spot . . ’ ? Why this impulse ? Do you see the signifi¬ 
cance ? Why back to the very spot ? Why not drown 
alongside — if he meant drowning — why back to the very 
spot, to see—as if his imagination had to be soothed by the 
assurance that all was over before death could bring relief ? 
I defy any one of you to offer another explanation. It was 
one of those bizarre and exciting glimpses through the fog. 
It was an extraordinary disclosure. He let it out as the 
most natural thing one could say. He fought down that 
impulse and then he became conscious of the silence. He 
mentioned this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, 
merged into one indefinite immensity still as death around 
these saved, palpitating lives. 1 You might have heard a 
pin drop in the boat,’ he said with a queer contraction of his 
lips, lik6 a man trying to master his sensibilities while re¬ 
lating some extremely moving fact. A silence ! God alone, 
who had willed him as he was, knows what he made of it 
in his heart. * I didn’t think any spot on earth could be so 



106 


LORD JIM 


still,’ he said. 1 You couldn’t distinguish the sea from the 
sky; there was nothing to see and nothing to hear. Not a 
glimmer, not a shape, not a sound. You could have believed 
that every bit of dry land had gone to the bottom; that 
every man on earth but I and these beggars in the boat had 
got drowned.’ He leaned over the table with his knuckles 
propped amongst coffee-cups, liqueur-glasses, cigar-ends. 
* I seemed to believe it. Everything was gone and — all was 
over ’ ... he fetched a deep sigh . . . 6 with me.’ ” 

Marlow sat up abruptly and flung away his cheroot with 
force. It made a darting red trail like a toy rocket fired 
through the drapery of the creepers. Nobody stirred. 

“ Hey, what do you think of it ? ” he cried with Sudden 
animation. “Wasn’t he true to himself, wasn’t he? His 
saved life was over for want of ground under his feet, for 
want of sights for his eyes, for want of voices in his ears. 
Annihilation — hey ! And all the time it was only a clouded 
sky, a sea that did not break, the air that did not stir. Only 
a night; only a silence. 

“ It lasted for a while, and then they were suddenly and 
unanimously moved to make a noise over their escape. ‘ I 
knew from the first she would go.’ ‘ Not a minute too soon.’ 
‘A narrow squeak, b’gosh!’ He said nothing, but the 
breeze that had dropped came back, a gentle draught fresh¬ 
ened steadily, and the sea joined its murmuring voice to 
this talkative reaction succeeding the dumb moments of 
awe. She was gone! She was gone! Not a doubt of it. 
Nobody could have helped. They repeated the same words 
over and over again as though they couldn’t stop them¬ 
selves. Never doubted she would go. The lights were 
gone. No mistake. The lights were gone. Couldn’t 
expect anything else. She had to go. . . . He noticed 
that they talked as though they had left behind them 


LORD JIM 


107 


nothing but an empty ship. They concluded she would 
not have been long when she once started. It seemed to 
cause them some sort of satisfaction. They assured each 
other that she couldn’t have been long about it —‘ Just 
shot down like a flat-iron.’ The chief engineer declared 
that the masthead light at the moment of sinking seemed 
to drop ‘like a lighted match you throw down.’ At this 
the second laughed hysterically. ‘ I am g-g-glad, I am 
gla-a-a-d.’ His teeth went on ‘ like an electric rattle,’ said 
Jim, ‘and all at once he began to cry. He wept and blub¬ 
bered like a child, catching his breath and sobbing, “Oh 
dear! oh dear! oh dear ! ” He would be quiet for a while 
and start suddenly, “ Oh, my poor arm! oh, my poor 
a-a-a-arm! ” I felt I could knock him down. Some of 
them sat in the stern-sheets. I could just make out their 
shapes. Voices came to me, mumble, mumble, grunt, grunt. 
All this seemed very hard to bear. I was cold too. And I 
could do nothing. I thought that if I moved I would have 
to go over the side and . . .’ 

“His hand groped stealthily, came in contact with a 
liqueur-glass, and was withdrawn suddenly as if it had 
touched a red-hot coal. I pushed the bottle slightly. 
‘Won’t you have some more?’ I asked. He looked at me 
angrily. ‘ Don’t you think I can tell you what there is to 
tell without screwing myself up ? ’ he asked. The squad 
of globe-trotters had gone to bed. We were alone but for a 
vague white form erect in the shadow, that, being looked 
at, cringed forward, hesitated, backed away silently. It 
was getting late, but I did not hurry my guest. 

“In the midst of his forlorn state he heard his com¬ 
panions begin to abuse some one. ‘What kept you from 
jumping, you lunatic ? 9 said a scolding voice. The chief 
engineer left the stern-sheets, and could be heard clamber- 





108 


LORD JIM 


ing forward as if with hostile intentions against ‘the great* 
est idiot that ever was/ The skipper shouted with rasping 
effort offensive epithets from where he sat at the oar. He 
lifted his head at that uproar, and heard the name ‘ George/ 
while a hand in the dark struck him on the breast. ‘ What 
have you got to say for yourself, you fool ? 9 queried some¬ 
body, with a sort of virtuous fury. ‘ They were after me/ 
he said. ‘They were abusing me — abusing me ... by 
the name of George/ 

“ He paused to stare, tried to smile, turned his eyes away 
and went on. ‘ That little second puts his head right under 
my nose, “ Why, it’s that blasted mate ! ” “ What! ” howls 

the skipper from the other end of the boat. “ No! ” shrieks 
the chief. And he too stooped to look at my face/ 

“ The wind had left the boat suddenly. The rain began 
to fall again, and the soft, uninterrupted, a little mysterious 
sound with which the sea receives a shower arose on all 
sides in the night. ‘They were too taken aback to say any¬ 
thing more at first/ he narrated steadily, ‘ and what could I 
have to say to them ? ’ He faltered for a moment, and 
made an effort to go on. ‘They called me horrible names/ 
His voice, sinking to a whisper, now and then would leap 
up suddenly, hardened by the passion of scorn, as though 
he had been talking of secret abomination. ‘Never mind 
what they called me/ he said grimly. ‘ I could hear hate 
in their voices. A good thing too. They could not forgive 
me for being in that boat. They hated it. It made them 
mad. . . / He laughed short. . . . ‘But it kept me fron 
— Look! I was sitting with my arms crossed on the gun* 
wale! . . / He perched himself smartly on the edge of 
the table and crossed his arms. . . . ‘ Like this — see ? 
One little tilt backwards and I would have been gone — 
after the other?. One little tilt—the least bit — the least 


LORD JIM 


109 


bit.’ He frowned, and tapping his forehead with the tip of 
his middle finger, ‘ It was there all the time,’ he said im¬ 
pressively. * All the time — that notion. And the rain—• 
cold, thick, cold as melted snow — colder — on my thin cot¬ 
ton clothes — I’ll never be so cold again in my life, I know. 
And the sky was black too — all black. Not a star, not a 
light anywhere. Nothing outside that confounded boat and 
those two yapping before me like a couple of mean mongrels 
at a tree’d thief. Yap! yap! What you doing here? 
You’re a fine sort! Too much of a bloomin’ gentleman to 
put his hand to it. Come out of your trance, did you ? To 
. sneak in? Did you? Yap! yap! You ain’t fit to live! 
Yap! yap! Two of them together trying to outbark each 
other. The other would bay from the stern through the 
rain — couldn’t see him — couldn’t make out — some of his 
filthy jargon. Yap! yap! Bow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Yap! yap! 
It was sweet to hear them; it kept me alive — I tell you. 
It has saved my life. At it they went, as if trying to drive 
me overboard with the noise! . . . I wonder you had pluck 
enough to jump. You ain’t wanted here. If I had known 
who it was, I would have tipped you over — you skunk. 
What have you done with the other ? Where did you get 
the pluck to jump — you coward? What’s to prevent us 
three from firing you overboard ? . . . They were out of 
breath; the shower passed away upon the sea. Then noth' 
ing. There was nothing round the boat, not even a sound- 
Wanted to see me overboard, did they ? Upon my soul! I 
iT think they would have had their wish if they had only kept 
quiet. Fire me overboard! Would they? “Try,” I said. 
“I would for twopence.” “Too good for you,” they 
screeched together. It was so dark that it was only when 
one or the other of them moved that I was quite sure of 
seeing him. By heavens! I only wish they had tried? 


110 


LORD JIM 


“I couldn’t help exclaiming, ‘What an extraordinary 
affair! ’ 

“‘Not bad — eh?’ he said, as if in some sort astounded. 
‘ They pretended to think I had done away with that don¬ 
key-man for some reason or other. Why should I ? And 
how the devil was I to know ? Didn’t I get somehow into 
that boat? into that boat —I . . .’ The muscles round 
his lips contracted into an unconscious grimace that tore 
through the mask of his usual expression — something 
violent, short-lived, and illuminating like a twist of light¬ 
ning that admits the eye for an instant into the secret con¬ 
volutions of a cloud. ‘I did. I was plainly there with 
them — wasn’t I ? Isn’t it awful a man should be driven 
to do a thing like that — and be responsible? What did I 
know about their George they were howling after? I re¬ 
membered I had seen him curled up on the deck. “ Mur¬ 
dering coward! ” the chief kept on calling me. He didn’t 
seem able to remember any other two words. I didn’t care, 
only his noise began to worry me. “ Shut up,” I said. At 
that he collected himself for a confounded screech. “ You 
killed him! You killed him!” “No!” I shouted, “but 
I will kill you directly.” I jumped up and he fell back¬ 
wards over a thwart with an awful loud thump. I don’t 
know why. Too dark. Tried to step back, I suppose. I 
stood still facing aft, and the wretched little second began 
to whine, “You ain’t going to hit a chap with a broken 
arm—and you call yourself a gentleman, too.” I heard 
a heavy tramp — one — two — and wheezy grunting. The 
other beast was coming at me, clattering his oar over the 
stern. I saw him moving, big, big — as you see a man in a 
mist, in a dream. “Come on,” I cried. I would have 
tumbled him over like a bale of shakings. He stopped, 
muttered to himself, and went back. Perhaps he had hearc 


LOKD JIM 


111 


the wind. I didn’t. It was the last heavy gust we had. 
He went back to his oar. I was sorry. I would have tried 
to — to . . 

“He opened and closed his curved fingers, and his 
hands had an eager and cruel flutter. ‘ Steady, steady,’ 
I murmured. 

“ ‘ Eh ? What ? I am not excited/ he remonstrated, 
awfully hurt, and with a convulsive jerk of his elbow 
knocked over the cognac bottle. I started forward, scraping 
my chair. He bounced off the table as if a mine had been 
exploded behind his back, and half turned before he 
alighted, crouching on his feet to show me a startled pair of 
eyes and a face white about the nostrils. A look of intense 
annoyance succeeded. i Awfully sorry. How clumsy of 
me!’ he mumbled, very vexed, while the pungent odour of 
spilt alcohol enveloped us suddenly with an atmosphere of a 
low drinking-bout in the cool, pure darkness of the night. 
The lights had been put out in the dining-hall; our candle 
glimmered solitary in the long gallery, and the columns had 
turned black from pediment to capital. On the vivid stars 
the high corner of the Harbour Office stood out distinct 
across the Esplanade, as though the sombre pile had glided 
nearer to see and hear. 

“ He assumed an air of indifference 

“ ‘ I daresay I am less calm now than I was then. I was 
ready for anything. These were trifles. . . .’ 

“ ‘ You had a lively time of it in that boat/ I remarked. 

“ ‘ I was ready/ he repeated. ‘ After the ship’s lights had 
gone, anything might have happened in that boat — any¬ 
thing in the world — and the world no wiser. I felt this, 
and I was pleased. It was just dark enough, too. We were 
like men walled up quick in a roomy grave. No concern 
with anything on earth. Nobody to pass an opinion. 


112 


LORD JIM 


Nothing mattered.’ For the third time during this conversa¬ 
tion he laughed harshly, but there was no one about to sus- 
pect him of being only drunk. ‘No fear, no law, no sounds, 
no eyes—not even our own, till—till sunrise at least.’ 

“ I was struck by the suggestive truth of his words. 
There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide 
sea. Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death 
there seems to fall the shadow of madness. When your 
ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the 
world that made you, restrained you, taken care of you. It 
is as if the souls of men floating on an abyss and in touch 
with immensity had been set free for any excess of heroism, 
absurdity, or abomination. Of course, as with belief, 
thought, love, hate, conviction, or even the visual aspect of 
material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are 
men, and in this one there was something abject which 
made the isolation more complete, — there was a villainy 
of circumstances that cut these men off more completely 
from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never 
undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They 
were exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: 
he focussed on them his hate of the whole thing; he would 
have liked to take a signal revenge for the abhorrent oppor¬ 
tunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat on the high 
seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the bottom of 
every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was part 
of the burlesque meanness pervading that particular dis¬ 
aster at sea that they did not come to blows. It was all 
threats, all a terribly effective feint, a sham from beginning 
to end, planned by the tremendous disdain of the Darh 
Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph, 
are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of men. I 
asked, after waiting for a while, 6 Well, what happened? 1 


LORD JIM 


113 


A futile question. I knew too much already to hope for 
the grace of a single uplifting touch, for the favour of 
hinted madness, of shadowed horror. ‘Nothing,’ he said. 
‘ I meant business, but they meant noise only. Nothing 
happened.’ 

“ And the rising sun found him just as he had jumped up 
first in the bows of the boat. What a persistence of readi¬ 
ness ! He had been holding the tiller in his hand, too, all 
the night. They had dropped the rudder overboard while 
attempting to ship it, and I suppose the tiller got kicked 
forward somehow while they were rushing up and down 
that boat trying to do all sorts of things at once so as to get 
clear of the side. It was a long, heavy piece of hard wood, 
and apparently he had been clutching it for six hours or so. 
If you don’t call that being ready! Can you imagine him, 
silent and on his feet half the night, his face to the gusts 
of rain, staring at sombre forms, watchful of vague move¬ 
ments, straining his ears to catch rare low murmurs in the 
stern-sheets! Firmness of courage or effort of fear ? 
What do you think ? And the endurance is undeniable, 
too. Six hours more or less on the defensive; six hours of 
alert immobility while the boat drove slowly or floated 
arrested, according to the caprice of the wind; while the 
sea, calmed, slept at last; while the clouds passed above 
his head; while the sky from an immensity, lustreless and 
black, diminished to a sombre and lustrous vault, scintil¬ 
lated with a greater brilliance, faded to the east, paled at 
the zenith; while the dark shapes blotting the low stars 
astern got outlines, relief; became shoulders, heads, faces, 
features, — confronted him with dreary stares, had dishev¬ 
elled hair, torn clothes, blinked red eyelids at the white 
dawn. ‘They looked as though they had been knocking 
*bout drunk in gutters for a week,’ he described graphi 


114 


LORD JIM 


cally; and then he muttered something about the sunrise 
being of a kind that foretells a calm day. You know that 
sailor habit of referring to the weather in every connection. 
And on my side his few mumbled words were enough to 
make me see the lower limb of the sun clearing the line of 
the horizon, the tremble of a vast ripple running over all 
the visible expanse of the sea, as if the waters had shud¬ 
dered, giving birth to the globe of light, while the last puff 
of the breeze would stir the air in a sigh of relief. 

“ ‘ They sat in the stern shoulder to shoulder, with the 
skipper in the middle, like three dirty owls, and stared at 
me,’ I heard him say with an intention of hate that distilled 
a corrosive virtue into the commonplace words like a drop 
of powerful poison falling into a glass of water; but my 
thoughts dwelt upon that sunrise. I could imagine under 
the pellucid emptiness of the sky these four men imprisoned 
in the solitude of the sea, the lonely sun, regardless of the 
speck of life, ascending the clear curve of the heaven as if 
to gaze ardently from a greater height at his own splendour 
reflected in the still ocean. ‘ They called out to me from 
aft/ said Jim, ‘as though we had been chums together. I 
heard them. They were begging me to be sensible and 
drop that “ blooming piece of wood.” Why would I carry 
on so ? They hadn’t done me any harm — had they ? 
There had been no harm. . . . No harm!’ 

“ His face crimsoned as though he could not get rid of 
the air in his lungs. 

“‘No harm ! 9 he burst out. ‘I leave it to you. You can 
understand. Can’t you? You see it — don’t you? No 
harm! Good God! What more could they have done? 
Oh, yes, I know very well—I jumped. Certainly. I 
jumped! I told you I jumped; but I tell you they were 
too much for any man. It was their doing as plainly as if 


l ,OKD JIM 


115 


they had reached up with a boat-hook and pulled me over. 
Can’t you see it? You must see it. Come. Speak — 
straight out.’ 

“ His uneasy eyes fastened upon mine, questioned, begged, 
challenged, entreated. For the life of me I couldn’t help 
murmuring, 4 You’ve been tried.’ ‘ More than is fair,’ he 
caught up swiftly. ‘ I wasn’t given half a chance — with 
a gang like that. And now they were friendly — oh, so 
damnably friendly! Chums, shipmates. All in the same 
boat. Make the best of it. They hadn’t meant anything 
They didn’t care a hang for George. George had gone back 
to his berth for something at the last moment and got 
caught. The man was a manifest fool. Very sad, of 
course. . . . Their eyes looked at me; their lips moved ; 
they wagged their heads at the other end of the boat — 
three of them; they beckoned — to me. Why not ? Hadn’t 
I jumped ? I said nothing. There are no words for the 
sort of things I wanted to say. If I had opened my lips 
just then I would have simply howled like an animal. I 
was asking myself when I would wake up. They urged me 
aloud to come aft and hear quietly what the skipper had to 
say. We were sure to be picked up before the evening — 
right in the track of all the Canal traffic; there was smoke 
to the northwest now. 

“ 4 It gave me an awful 3hock to see this faint, faint blur, 
this low trail of brown mist through which you could see 
the boundary of sea and sky. I called out to them that I 
could hear very well where I was. The skipper started 
swearing, as hoarse as a crow. He wasn’t going to talk at 
the top of his voice for my accommodation. “Are you 
afraid they will hear you on shore ? ” I asked. He glared 
as if he would have liked to claw me to pieces. The chief 
engineer advised him to humour me. He said I wasn’t 


116 


JIM 


right in my head yet. The other rose astern, like a thick 
pillar of flesh — and talked—talked. . . .’ 

“Jim remained thoughtful. ‘Well?* I said. ‘What 
did I care what story they agreed to make up ?’ he cried 
recklessly. ‘They could tell what they jolly well liked. 
It was their business. I knew the story. Nothing they 
could make people believe could alter it for me. I let him 
talk, argue—talk, argue. He went on and on and on. 
Suddenly I felt my legs give way under me. I was sick, 
tired — tired to death. I let fall the tiller, turned my back 
on them, and sat down on the foremost thwart. I had 
enough. They called to me to know if I understood — 
wasn’t it true, every word of it ? It was true, by God! 
after their fashion. I did not turn my head. 1 heard them 
palavering together. “ The silly ass won’t say anything.” 
“ Oh, he understands well enough.” “ Let him be ; he will 
be all right.” “ What can he do ? ” What could I do! 
Weren’t we all in the same boat. I tried to be deaf. The 
smoke had disappeared to the northward. It was a dead 
calm. They had a drink from the water-breaker, and I 
drank too. Afterwards they made a great business of 
spreading the boat-sail over the gunwales. Would I keep 
a look-out? They crept under, out of my sight, thank 
God ! I felt weary, weary, done up, as if I hadn’t had one 
hour’s sleep since the day I was born. I couldn’t see the 
w ater for the glitter of the sunshine. From time to time 
one of them would creep out, stand up to take a look all 
round, and get under again. I could hear spells of snoring 
below the sail. Some of them could sleep. One of them 
at least. I couldn’t! All was light, light, and the boat 
seemed to be falling through it. Now and then I would 
feel quite surprised to find myself sitting on a thwart. . . 

“ He began to walk with measured steps to and fro before 


LORD JIM 


lit 


my chair, one hand in his trousers-pocket, his head bent 
thoughtfully, and his right arm at long intervals raised 
for a gesture that seemed to put out of his way an invisible 
intruder. 

“ ‘ I suppose you think I was going mad/ he began in a 
changed tone. ‘ And well you may, if you remember I had 
lost my cap. The sun crept all the way from east to west 
over my bare head, but that day I could not come to any 
harm, I suppose. The sun could not make me mad. . . 
His right arm put aside the idea of madness. . . . ‘Neither 
could it kill me. . .’ Again his arm repulsed a shadow 
. . ‘TJiat rested with me.’ 

“ ‘ Did it ? ’ I said, inexpressibly amazed at this new 
turn, and I looked at him with the same sort of feeling 
I might be fairly conceived to experience had he, after 
spinning round on his heel, presented an altogether new 
face. 

“ •' I didn’t get brain fever, I did not drop dead either,’ 
he went on. ‘ I didn’t bother myself at all about the sun 
over my head. I was thinking as coolly as any man that 
ever sat thinking in the shade. That greasy beast of a 
skipper poked his big cropped head from under the canvas 
and screwed his fishy eyes up at me. “ Donnerwetter! you 
will die,” he growled, and drew in like a turtle. I had 
seen him. I had heard him. He didn’t interrupt me. I 
was thinking just then that I wouldn’t.’ 

“ He tried to sound my thought with an attentive glance 
dropped on me in passing. ‘ Do you mean to say you had 
been deliberating with yourself whether you would die?’ 
I asked in as impenetrable a tone as I could command. He 
nodded without stopping. ‘ Yes, it had come to that as I 
sat there alone/ he said. He passed on a few steps to the 
imaginary end of his beat, and when he flung round tv 


118 


LORD JIM 


come back both his hands were thrust deep into his pock 
ets. He stopped short in front of my chair and looked 
down. ‘ Don’t you believe it?’ he inquired with tens* 
curiosity. I was moved to make a solemn declaration oi 
my readiness to believe implicitly anything he thought fit 
to tell me.” 


CHAPTER XI 

“ He heard me out with his head on one side, and I had 
another glimpse through a rent in the mist in which he 
moved and had his being. The dim candle spluttered 
within the ball of glass, and that was all I had to see him 
by; at his back was the dark night with the clear stars, 
whose distant glitter disposed in retreating planes lured 
the eye into the depths of a greater darkness; and yet a 
mysterious light seemed to show me his boyish head, as if 
in that moment the youth within him had, for a moment, 
gleamed and expired. ‘You are an awful good sort to 
listen like this/ he said. ‘It does me good. You don’t 
know what it is to me. You don’t ’ . . . words seemed to 
fail him. It was a distinct glimpse. He was a youngster 
of the sort you like to see about you; of the sort you like 
to imagine yourself to have been; of the sort whose ap¬ 
pearance claims the fellowship of these illusions you had 
thought gone out, extinct, cold, and which, as if rekindled 
at the approach of another flame, give a flutter deep, deep 
down somewhere, give a flutter of light ... of heat! . . . 
Yes; I had a glimpse of him then, . . . and it was not the 
last of that kind. . . . ‘You don’t know what it is for a 
fellow in my position to be believed — make a clean breast 
of it to an elder man. It is so difficult — so awfully unfail 
c o hard to understand.’ 



LOUD JIM 


119 


u The mists were closing again. I don’t know how old I 
appeared to him — and how much wise? Not half as old 
as I felt just then; not half as uselessly wise as I knew 
myself to be. Surely in no other craft as in that of the 
sea do the hearts of those already launched to sink or swim' 
go out so much to the youth on the brink, looking with 
shining eyes upon that glitter of the vast surface which is 
only a reflection of his own glances full of fire. There is 
such magnificent vagueness in the expectations that had 
driven each of us to sea, such a glorious indefiniteness 
such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own an<£ 
only reward! What we get — well, we won’t talk of that; 
but can one of us restrain a smile ? In no other kind of 
life is the illusion more wide of reality — in no other is the 
beginning all illusion — the disenchantment more swift — 
the subjugation more complete. Hadn’t we all commenced 
with the same desire, ended with the same knowledge, car¬ 
ried the memory of the same cherished glamour through 
the sordid da}'S of imprecation ? What wonder that when 
some heavy prod gets home the bond is found to be close; 
that besides the fellowship of the craft there is felt the 
strength of a wider feeling — the feeling that binds a man 
to a child. He was there before me, believing that age and 
wisdom can find a remedy against the pain of truth, giving 
me a glimpse of himself as a young fellow in a scrape that 
is the very devil of a scrape, the sort of scrape greybeards 
wag at solemnly while they hide a smile. And he had 
been deliberating upon death — confound him! He had 
found that to meditate about because he thought he had 
saved his life, while all its glamour had gone with the ship 
in the night. What more natural! It was tragic enough 
and funny enough in all conscience to call aloud for com 
passion, and in what was I better than the rest of us to 


120 


LORD JIM 


refuse him my pity. And even as I looked at him the 
mists rolled into the rent, and his voice spoke: — 

444 1 was so lost, you know. It was the sort of thing one 
does not expect to happen to one. It was not like a fight, 
for instance/ 

44 4 It was not/ J admitted. He appeared changed, as if 
he had suddenly matured. 

444 One couldn’t be sure/ he muttered. 

444 Ah! You were not sure/ I said, and was placated 
by the sound of a faint sigh that passed between us like 
the flight of a bird in the night. 

44 4 Well, I wasn’t/ he said courageously. 4 It was some¬ 
thing like that wretched story they made up. It was not 
a lie — but it wasn’t truth all the same. It was something. 
. . . One knows a downright lie. There was not the 
thickness of a sheet of paper between the right and the 
wrong of this affair.’ 

44 4 How much more did you want ? ’ I asked; but 1 
think I spoke so low that he did not catch what I said. 
He had advanced his argument as though life had 
been a network of paths separated by chasms. His voice 
sounded reasonable. 

44 4 Suppose I had not — I mean to say, suppose I had 
stuck to the ship ? Well. How much longer ? Say a 
minute — half a minute. Come. In thirty seconds, as it 
seemed certain then, I would have been overboard ; and do 
you think I would not have laid hold of the first thing 
that came in my way — oar, life-buoy, grating — anything. 
Wouldn’t you ? ’ 

44 4 And be saved/ I interjected. 

44 4 1 would have meant to be/ he retorted. 4 And that’s 
more than I meant when I ’ he shivered as if to swal¬ 
low some nauseous drug . . . ‘jumped/ he pronounced 


LORD JIM 


m 


with a convulsive effort, whose stress, as if propagated 
by the waves of the air, made my body stir a little in 
the chair. He fixed me with lowering eyes. ‘ Don’t you 
believe me ? ’ he cried. ‘ I swear! . . . Confound it! 

You got me here to talk, and . . . You must! . . . You 

said you would believe.’ ‘ Of course I do,’ x protested in 
a matter-of-fact tone which produced a calming effect. 
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Of course I wouldn’t have talked 
to you about all this if you had not been a gentleman 
I ought to have known ... I am — I am — a gentleman 
too. . . ’ ‘ Yes, yes,’ I said hastily. He was looking 

me squarely in the face, and withdrew his gaze slowly. 

‘Now you understand why I didn’t after all . . . didn’t 
go out in that way. I wasn’t going to be frightened at 
what I had done. And, anyhow, if I had stuck to the 
ship I would have done my best to be saved. Men have 
been known to float for hours — in the open sea — and 
be picked up not much the worse for it. I might have 
lasted it out better than many others. There’s nothing 
the matter with my heart.’ He withdrew his right fist 
from his pocket, and the blow he struck on his chest 
resounded like a muffled detonation in the night. 

“‘No/ I said. He meditated, with his legs slightly 
apart and his chin sunk. ‘ A hair’s-breadth,’ he muttered. 
‘Not the breadth of a hair between this and that. And at 
the time . . .’ 

“‘It is difficult to see a hair at midnight/ l put in, a 
little viciously, I fear. Don’t you see what I mean by the 
solidarity of the craft? I was aggrieved against him, as 
though he had cheated me —me! —of a splendid oppor 
tunity to keep up the illusion of my beginnings, as though 
he had robbed our common life of the last spark of its 
glamour. ‘And so you cleared out—at once-’ 


*22 


IiORD JIM 


“‘Jumped,’ he corrected me incisively. ‘Jumped — 
mind! ’ he repeated, and I wondered at the evident but 
obscure intention. ‘Well, yes! Perhaps I could not see 
then. But I had plenty of time and any amount of light 
in that boat. And I could think too. Nobody would 
know, of course, but this did not make it any easier for 
me. You’ve got to believe that too. I did not want all 
this talk. . . . No . . . Yes ... I won’t lie ... I wanted 
it: it is the very thing I wanted — there. Bo you think 
you or anybody could have made me if I ... I am — I am 
not afraid to tell. And I wasn’t afraid to think either. I 
looked it in the face. I wasn’t going to run away. At 
first — at night, if it hadn’t been for these fellows I might 
have . . . No! by heavens! I was not going to give them 
that satisfaction. They had done enough. They made up 
a story, and believed it for all I know. But I knew the 
truth, and I would live it down — alone, with myself. I 
wasn’t going to give in to such a beastly unfair thing. 
What did it prove after all ? I was confoundedly cut up. 
Sick of life — to tell you the truth; but what would have 
been the good to shirk it — in — in—that way? That was 
not the way. I believe — I believe it would have — it would 
have ended — nothing.’ 

“ He had been walking up and down, but with the last 
word he turned short at me. 

“‘What do you believe?’ he asked with violence. A 
pause ensued, and suddenly I felt myself overcome by a 
profound and hopeless fatigue, as though his voice had 
startled me out of a dream of wandering through empty 
spaces whose immensity had harassed my soul and ex¬ 
hausted my body. 

“ . . Would have ended nothing,’ he muttered over me 

obstinately, after a little while. ‘No! the proper thing 


LORI) JIM 


123 


was to face it out — alone before myself — wait for another 
chance — find out . . ” 


CHAPTER XII 

“All around everything was still as far as the ear could 
reach. The mist of his feelings shifted between us, as if, 
disturbed by his struggles, and in the rifts of the immaterial 
veil, he would appear to my staring eyes distinct of form 
and pregnant with vague appeal like a symbolic figure in a 
picture. The chill air of the night seemed to lie on my 
limbs as heavy as a slab of marble. 

“‘I see,’ I murmured, more to prove to myself that I 
could break my state of numbness than for any other 
reason. 

“‘The Avondale picked us up just before sunset,’ he 
remarked moodily. ‘ Steamed right straight for us. We 
had only to sit and wait.’ 

“After a long interval, he said, ‘They told their story.’ 
4nd again there was that oppressive silence. ‘ Then only 
I knew what it was I had made up my mind to,’ he added. 

“ ‘ You said nothing,’ I whispered. 

“ ‘ What could I say ? ’ he asked, in the same low tone. 
. . . ‘Shock slight. Stopped the ship. Ascertain the 
damage. Took measures to get the boats out without 
creating a panic. As the first boat was lowered ship went 
down in a squall. Sank like lead. . . . What could be 
more clear’ ... he hung his head . . . ‘ and more awful ? 
His lips quivered while he looked straight into my eyes 
‘I had jumped —hadn’t I?’ he asked, dismayed. ‘That’s 
what I had to live down. The story didn’t matter.’ . . . 
He clasped his hands for an instant, glanced right and 



124 


LORD JIM 


left into the gloom: 4 It was like cheating the dead/ he 
stammered. 

(i * And there were no dead/ I said. 

“ 4 He went away from me at this. That is the only way 
I can describe it. In a moment I saw his back close to the 
balustrade. He stood there for some time, as if admiring 
the purity and the peace of the night. Some flowering-shrub 
in the garden below spread its powerful scent through the 
damp air. He returned to me with hasty steps. 

“ 4 And that did not matter/ he said, as stubbornly as you 
please. 

444 Perhaps not/ I admitted. I began to have a notion he 
was too much for me. After all, what did I know ? 

444 Dead or not dead, I could not get clear/ he said. 4 1 
had to live; hadn’t I ? 9 

44 4 Well, yes — if you take it in that way/ I mumbled. 

44 4 1 was glad of course/ he threw out carelessly, with his 
mind fixed on something else. 4 The exposure/ he pro¬ 
nounced slowly, and lifted his head. 4 Do you know what 
was my first thought when I heard ? I was relieved. I 
was relieved to learn that those shouts — did I tell you 
I had heard shouts ? No? Well, I did. Shouts for help, 
... . blown along with the drizzle. Imagination, I suppose. 
And yet I can hardly ... How stupid. . . . The others 
did not. I asked them afterwards. They all said No. No ? 
And 1 was hearing them even then! I might have known 

— but I didn’t think — I only listened. Very faint screams 

— day after day. Then that little half-caste chap here 
came up and spoke to me. 44 The Patna . . . French gun¬ 
boat . . towed successfully to Aden . . . Investigation 
. . . Marine Office . . . Sailors’ Home . . . arrangements 
made for your board and lodging! ’ I walked along with 
him, and I enjoyed the silence. So there had been in? 


LORD JIM 


125 


shouting. Imagination. I had to believe him. I could 
hear nothing any more. I wonder how long I could have 
stood it. It was getting worse, too ... I mean — louder.’ 

“ He fell into thought. 

“* And I had heard nothing! Well — so be it. But the 
lights! The lights did go ! We did not see them. They 
were not there. If they had been, I would have swam back 

— I would have gone back and shouted alongside — I would 
have begged them to take me on board. ... I would have 
had my chance. . . . You doubt me? . . . How do you 
know how I felt ? . . . What right have you to doubt ? . . . 
I very nearly did it as it was — do you understand ? ’ His 
voice fell. * There was not a glimmer — not a glimmer,’ he 
protested mournfully. * Don’t you understand that if there 
had been, you would not have seen me here ? You see me 

— and you doubt.’ 

“I shook my head negatively. This question of the 
lights being lost sight of when the boat could not have been 
more than a quarter of a mile from the ship was a matter 
for much discussion. Jim stuck to it that there was nothing 
to be seen after the first shower had cleared away; and the 
others had affirmed the same thing to the officers of the 
Avondale . Of course people shook their heads and smiled. 
One old skipper who sat near me in court tickled my ear 
with his white beard to murmur, ‘ Of course they would lie.’ 
A.s a matter of fact nobody lied; not even the chief engineer 
with his story of the masthead light dropping like a match 
you throw down. Not consciously, at least. A man with 
his liver in such a state might very well have seen a float¬ 
ing spark in the corner of his eye when stealing a hurried 
glance over his shoulder. They had seen no light of any 
sort though they were well within range, and they could 
only explain this in one way : the ship had gone down. It 


126 


LORD JIM 


was obvious and comforting. The foreseen fact coming so 
swiftly had justified their haste. No wonder they did not 
cast about for any other explanation. Yet the true one was 
very simple, and as soon as Brierly suggested it the court 
ceased to bother about the question. If you remember, the 
ship had been stopped, and was lying with her head on the 
course steered through the night, with her stern canted 
high and her bows brought low down in the water through 
the filling of the fore compartment. Being thus out of trim, 
when the squall struck her a little on the quarter, she 
swung head to wind as sharply as though she had been at 
anchor. By this change in her position all her lights were 
in a very few moments shut off from the boat to leeward. 
It may very well be that, had they been seen, they would 
have had the effect of a mute appeal — that their glimmer 
lost in the darkness of the cloud would have had the mys< 
terious power of the human glance that can awaken the 
feelings of remorse and pity. It would have said, ‘ I am 
here — still here/ . . . and what more can the eye of the 
most forsaken of human beings say ? But she turned her 
back on them as if in disdain of their fate: she had swung 
round, burdened, to glare stubbornly at the new danger of 
the open sea which she so strangely survived to end her 
days in a breaking-up yard, as if it had been her recorded 
fate to die obscurely under the blows of many hammers. 
What were the various ends their destiny provided for the 
pilgrims I am unable to say; but the immediate future 
brought, at about nine o’clock next morning, a French gun¬ 
boat homeward bound from Reunion. The report of her 
commander was public property. He had swept a little 
out of his course to ascertain what was the matter with 
:hat steamer floating dangerously by the head upon a still 
and hazy sea. There was an ensign, union down, flying at 


LORD JIM 


127 


her main gaff (the serang had the sense to make a signal of 
distress at daylight); but the cooks were preparing the food 
in the cooking-boxes forward, as usual. The decks were 
packed as close as a sheep-pen ; there were people perched 
all along the rails, jammed on the bridge in a solid mass; 
hundreds of eyes stared, and not a sound was heard when 
the gunboat ranged abreast, as if all that multitude of lips 
had been sealed by a spell. 

“ The Frenchman hailed, could get no intelligible reply, 
and after ascertaining through his binoculars that the 
crowd on deck did not look plague-stricken, decided to send 
a boat. Two officers came on board, listened to the serang, 
tried to talk with the Arab, couldn’t make head or tail of 
it: but of course the nature of the emergency was obvious 
enough. They were also very much struck by discovering 
a white man, dead and curled up peacefully on the bridge. 
‘ Fort intrigues par ce cadavre ,’ as I was informed a long 
time after by an elderly French lieutenant whom I came 
across one afternoon in Sydney, by the merest chance, in a 
sort of cafe, and who remembered the affair perfectly. In¬ 
deed this affair, I may notice in passing, had an extraordi¬ 
nary power of defying the shortness of memories and the 
length of time: it seemed to live, with a sort of uncanny 
vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their tongues. 
I’ve had the questionable pleasure of meeting it often, years 
afterwards, thousands of miles away, emerging from the 
remotest possible talk, coming to the surface of the most 
distant allusions. Has it not turned up to-night between 
us ? And I am the only seaman here. I am the only one 
to whom it is a memory. And yet it has made its way out 1 
But if two men who, unknown to each other, knew of this 
affair met accidentally on any spot of this earth, the thing 
Would pop up between them as sure as fate, before they 


128 


LORD JIM 


parted. I had never seen that Frenchman before, and at 
the end of an hour we had done with each other for life: 
he did not seem particularly talkative either; he was a 
quiet, massive chap in a creased uniform, sitting drowsily 
over a tumbler half full of some dark liquid. His shoulder- 
straps were a bit tarnished, his clean-shaved cheeks were 
large and sallow ; he looked like a man who would be given 
to taking snuff — don’t you know ? I won’t say he did \ 
but the habit would have fitted that kind of man. It all 
began by his handing me a number of ‘Home News,’ which 
I didn’t want, across the marble table. I said ‘Merci.’ We 
exchanged a few apparently innocent remarks, and suddenly, 
before I knew how it had come about, we were in the midst 
of it, and he was telling me how much they had been ‘in¬ 
trigued by that corpse.’. It turned out he had been one of 
the boarding officers. 

“In the establishment where we sat one could get a 
variety of foreign drinks which were kept for the visiting 
naval officers, and he took a sip of the dark medical-looking 
stuff, which probably was nothing more nasty than cassis 
d Veau, and glancing with one eye into the tumbler, shook 
his head slightly. ‘ Impossible de comprendre — vous com 
cevez,’ he said, with a curious mixture of unconcern and 
thoughtfulness. I could very easily conceive how impos¬ 
sible it had been for them to understand. Nobody in the 
gunboat knew enough English to get hold of the story as 
told by the serang. There was a good deal of noise, too- 
round the two officers. ‘They crowded upon us. Ther» 
was a circle round that dead man (aidour de ce mart), lit 
described. ‘ One had to attend to the most pressing. These 
people were beginning to agitate themselves — Parbleu ! A 
mob like that — don’t you see ?’ he interjected with philo¬ 
sophic indulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his 


LORD JIM 


129 


commander that the safest thing was to leave it alone, it 
was so villainous to look at. They got two hawsers on 
board promptly (en toute hdte ) and took the Patna in tow — 
stern foremost at that — which, under the circumstances, 
was not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of 
the water to be of any great use for steering, and this 
manoeuvre eased the strain on the bulkhead, whose state, 
he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded the greatest 
care (foigeait les plus grands managements). I could not 
help thinking that my new acquaintance must have had 
a voice in most of these arrangements : he looked a reliable 
officer, no longer very active, and he was seamanlike too, in 
a way, though, as he sat there, with his thick fingers clasped 
lightly on his stomach, he reminded you of one of those 
snuffy, quiet village priests, into whose ears are poured the 
sins, the sufferings, the remorse of peasant generations, on 
whose faces the placid and simple expression is like a veil 
thrown over the mystery of pain and distress. He ought 
to have had a threadbare black soutane buttoned smoothly 
up to his ample chin, instead of a frock-coat with shoulder- 
straps and brass buttons. His broad bosom heaved regularly 
while he went on telling me that it had been the very devil 
of a job, as doubtless ( sans doute ) I could figure to myself in 
my quality of a seaman (en votre quality de marin). At the 
end of the period he inclined his body slightly towards me, 
and, pursing his shaved lips, allowed the air to escape with a 
gentle hiss. ‘ Luckily/ he continued,‘ the sea was level like 
this table, and there was no more wind than there is here.’ 

. . . The place struck me as indeed intolerably stuffy and 
very hot; my face burned as though I had been young enough 
to be embarrassed and blushing. They had directed their 
course, he pursued, to the nearest English port ‘naturellfr 
merit/ where their responsibility ceased, ‘ Dieu merci .’ . . 


130 


LORD JIM 


He blew out his flat cheeks a little. . . . ‘ Because, mind 
you ( notez bien), all the time of towing we had two quarter 
masters stationed with axes by the hawsers, to cut us clear 
of our tow in case she . . He fluttered downwards his 
heavy eyelids, making his meaning as plain as possible. ... 
‘ What would you! One does what one can (on fait ce qu’oii 
peut)J and for a moment he managed to invest his ponderous 
immobility with an air of resignation. ‘ Two quartermas¬ 
ters— thirty hours — always there. Two!’ he repeated, 
lifting up his right hand a little, and exhibiting two fingers. 
This was absolutely the first gesture I saw him make. It 
gave me the opportunity to ‘ note ’ a starred scar on the 
back of his hand — effect of a gunshot clearly; and, as if 
my sight had been made more acute by this discovery, I 
perceived also the seam of an old wound, beginning a little 
below the temple and going out of sight under the short 
grey hair at the side of his head — the graze of a spear or 
the cut of a sabre. He clasped his hands on his stomach 
again. ‘1 remained on board that, that — my memory is 
going (s’en va). Ah! Patt-nd,. (Test bien ga. Patt^nH. 
Merci. It is droll how one forgets. I stayed on that ship 
thirty hours. . . * 

“‘ You did!’ I exclaimed. Still gazing at his hands, he 
pursed his lips a little, but this time made no hissing 
sound. ‘It was judged proper/ he said, lifting his eye- 
brows dispassionately, ‘that one of the officers should 
remain to keep an eye open (pour ouvrir Voeil)’ . . . he 
sighed idly . . . ‘and for communicating by signals with 
the towing ship — do you see — and so on. For the rest, 
it was my opinion too. We made our boats ready to drop 
over — and I also on that ship took measures. . . . Enfin J 
One has done one’s possible. It was a delicate position. 
Thirty hours. They prepared me some food. As for the 


LORD JIM 


131 


wine — go and whistle for it — not a drop.’ In some ex¬ 
traordinary way, without any marked change in his inert 
attitude and in the placid expression of his face, he man¬ 
aged to convey the idea of profound disgust. ‘ I — you 
know — when it comes to eating without my gla^s of wine 
— I am nowhere.’ 

“I was afraid he would enlarge upon the grievance, for 
though he didn’t stir a limb or twitch a feature, he made 
one aware how much he was irritated by the recollection. 
But he seemed to forget all about it. They delivered their 
charge to the ‘port authorities,’ as he expressed it. He 
was struck by the calmness with which it had been re¬ 
ceived. ‘One might have thought they had such a drcl! 
find ( drdle de trouvaille) brought them every day. You are 
extraordinary — you others,’ he commented, with his back 
propped against the wall, and looking himself as incapable 
of an emotional display as a sack of meal. There hap¬ 
pened to be a man-of-war and an Indian Marine steamer 
in the harbour at the time, and he did not conceal his 
admiration of the efficient manner in which the boats of 
these two ships cleared the Patna of her passengers. In¬ 
deed his torpid demeanour concealed nothing: it had that 
mysterious, almost miraculous, power of producing striking 
effects by means impossible of detection which is the last 
word of the highest art. ‘ Twenty-five minutes — watch 
in hand — twenty-five, no more.’ ... He unclasped and 
clasped again his fingers without removing his hands from 
his stomach, and made it infinitely more effective than if 
he had thrown up his arms to heaven in amazement. . . . 
‘All that lot ( tout ce monde) on shore — with their little 
affairs — nobody left but a guard of seamen ( marina de 
VEtat ) and that interesting corpse ( cet interfasant cadavre). 
Twenty-five minutes.’ . . . With downcast eyes and his 


132 


LORD JIM 


head tilted slightly on one side, he seemed to roll know¬ 
ingly on his tongue the savour of a smart bit of work. 
He persuaded one, without any further demonstration, that 
his approval was eminently worth having, and resuming 
his hardly interrupted immobility, he went on to inform 
me that, being under orders to make the best of their way 
to Toulon, they left in two hours’ time, ‘ so that (de sorte 
que) there are many things in this incident of my life 
(dans cet Episode de ma vie) which have remained obscure .’ n 


CHAPTER XIII 

“ After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, 
so to speak, submitted himself passively to a state of silence. 
I kept him company; and suddenly, but not abruptly, as if 
the appointed time had arrived for his moderate and husky 
voice to come out of his immobility, he pronounced, ‘ Mon 
Dieu1 how the time passes!’ Nothing could have been 
more commonplace than this remark; but its utterance co¬ 
incided for me with a moment of vision. It’s extraordinary 
how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, 
with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it 
may be that it is this very dulness that makes life to the in¬ 
calculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Never¬ 
theless, there can be but few of us who have never known 
one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, 
understand ever so much — everything — in a flash — before 
we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised 
my eyes when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had 
never seen him before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, 
the clumsy folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motion¬ 
less pose, so curiously suggestive of his havi^ja, been simply 



LORD JIM 


133 


left there. Time had passed indeed: it had overtaken him 
and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with a 
few poor gifts : the iron-grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the 
tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulder-straps; 
one of those steady, reliable men, who are the raw material 
of great reputations, one of those uncounted lives that are 
buried without drums and trumpets under the foundations 
of monumental successes. ‘1 am now third lieutenant of 
Victoneuse’ (she was the flagship of the French Pacific 
squadron at the time), he said, detaching his shoulders from 
the wall a couple of inches to introduce himself. I bowed 
slightly on my side of the table, and told him I commanded 
a merchant vessel at present anchored in Rushcutters , Bay. 
He had ‘remarked’ her, — a pretty little craft. He was 
•very civil about it in his impassive way. I even fancy he 
went the length of tilting his head in compliment as he 
repeated, breathing visibly the while, ‘ Ah, yes. A little 
craft painted black — very pretty — very pretty (tr&s co¬ 
quet).’ After a time he twisted his body slowly to face the 
glass door on our right. ‘ A dull town (Triste ville)’ he 
observed, staring into the street. It was a brilliant day; a 
southerly buster was raging, and we could see the passers- 
by, men and women, buffeted by the wind on the sidewalks, 
the sunlit fronts of the houses across the road blurred 
by the tall whirls of dust. ‘ I descended on shore,’ he said, 
‘to stretch my legs a little, but . . .’ He didn’t finish, 
and sank into the depths of his repose. ‘ Pray — tell me,’ 
he began, coming up ponderously, ‘what was there at the 
bottom of this affair — precisely (au juste ) ? It is curious. 
That dead man, for instance — and so on.’ 

“‘There were living men too,’ I said ; ‘much more 
curious.’ 

“‘Nodoubt, no doubt,’ he agreed half inaudibly, then, as 


134 


LORD JIM 


if, after mature consideration, murmured, ‘Evidently.’ 1 
made no difficulty in communicating to him what had 
interested me most in this affair. It seemed as though 
he had a right to know: hadn’t he spent thirty hours 
on board the Patna — had he not taken the succes¬ 
sion, so to speak, had he not done ‘ his possible ’ ? He 
listened to me, looking more priest-like than ever, and with 
what — probably on account of his downcast eyes — had 
the appearance of devout concentration. Once or twice 
he elevated his eyebrows (but without raising his eyelids) 
as one would say ‘ The devil! ’ Once he calmly exclaimed, 
‘Ah, bah! ’ under his breath, and when I had finished he 
pursed his lips in a deliberate way and emitted a sort 
of sorrowful whistle. 

“ In any one else it might have been an evidence of 
boredom, a sign of indifference; but he, in his occult way, 
managed to make his immobility appear profoundly respon¬ 
sive, and as full of valuable thoughts as an egg is of meat. 
What he said at last was nothing more than a ‘ very 
interesting,’ pronounced politely, and not much above a 
whisper. Before I got over my disappointment he added, 
but as if speaking to himself, ‘ That’s it. That is it.’ His 
chin seemed to sink lower on his breast, his body to weigh 
heavier on his seat. I was about to ask him what he 
meant when a sort of preparatory tremor passed over his 
whole person, as a faint ripple may be seen upon stag¬ 
nant water even before the wind is felt. ‘And so that 
poor young man ran away along with the others,’ he said, 
with grave tranquillity. 

“I don’t know what made me smile: it is the only 
genuine smile of mine I can remember in connection with 
Jim’s affair. But somehow this simple statement of the 
matter sounded funny in French. . . . S’est enfui avec let 


LOUD JIM 


ISi 


autres ,’ had said the lieutenant. And suddenly I began 
to admire the discrimination of the man. He had made 
out the point at once: he did get hold of the only thing I 
cared about. I felt as though I were taking professional 
opinion on the case. His imperturbable and mature calm¬ 
ness was that of an expert in possession of the facts, and 
to whom one’s perplexities are mere child’s play. ‘ Ah ! 
The young, the young,’ he said indulgently. ‘ And after all, 
one does not die of it.’ 1 Die of what ? ’ I asked swiftly. 
*Of being afraid.’ He elucidated his meaning and sipped 
his drink. 

“I perceived that the three last fingers of his wounded 
hand were stiff and could not move independently of each 
other, so that he took up his tumbler with an ungainly 
clutch. ‘One is always afraid. One may talk, but . . .’ 
He put down the glass awkwardly. . . . ‘ The fear, the 
fear — look you — it is always there.’ . . . He touched his 
breast near a brass button, on the very spot where Jim had 
given a thump to his own when protesting that there was 
nothing the matter with his heart. I suppose I made some 
sign of dissent, because he insisted, ‘ Yes ! yes! One talks, 
one talks; this is all very fine; but at the end of the reck¬ 
oning one is no cleverer than the next man—and no more 
brave. Brave! This is always to be seen. I have rolled 
my hump (rouU ma bosse ),’ he said, using the slang expres¬ 
sion with imperturbable seriousness, ‘ in all parts of the 
world ; I have known brave men — famous ones ! Allez! ’ 
... He drank carelessly. . . . ‘ Brave — you conceive — in 
the Service — one has got to be—the trade demands it 
(le metier veux $a). Is it not so ? ’ he appealed to me 
reasonably. ‘ Eli bien! Each of them — I say each of 
them, if he were an honest man — bien entendu — would 
Gonfess that there is a point — there is a point — for the 


136 


LORD JIM 


best of us — there is somewhere a point when you let go 
everything (vous lachez tout). And you have got to live 
with that truth — do you see ? Given a certain combina¬ 
tion of circumstances, fear is sure to come. Abominable 
funk (un trac epouvantable). And even for those who do 
not believe this truth there is fear all the same — the fear 
of themselves. Absolutely so. Trust me. Yes. Yes. . . . 
At my age one knows what one is talking about — que 
diable!’ . . . He had delivered himself of all this as im¬ 
movably as though he had been the mouthpiece of abstract 
wisdom, but at this point he heightened the effect of detach¬ 
ment by beginning to twirl his thumbs slowly. ‘ It’s evi¬ 
dent— parbleu!’ he continued; ‘for, make up your mind as 
much as you like, even a simple headache or a fit of indiges¬ 
tion (un derangement d’estomac) is enough to . . . Take 
me, for instance — I have made my proofs. Eh bien ! I, 
who am speaking to you, once . . .’ 

“He drained his glass and returned to his twirling. ‘No, 
no; one does not die of it,’ he pronounced finally, and when 
I found he did not mean to proceed with the personal anec¬ 
dote, I was extremely disappointed; the more so as it was 
not the sort of story, you know, one could very well press 
him for. I sat silent, and he, too, as if nothing could please 
him better. Even his thumbs were still now. Suddenly 
his lips began to move. ‘ That is so,’ he resumed placidly. 
‘ Man is born a coward (L’homme est ne poltron). It is a 
difficulty — parbleu! It would be too easy otherwise. But 
habit — habit — necessity — do you see ? — the eye of others 
— voild. One puts up with it. And then the example 
of others who are no better than yourself, and yet make 
good countenance. . . .’ 

“ His voice ceased. 

“‘That young man— you will observe — had none ot 




LORD JIM 


137 


these inducements — at least at the moment/ I re¬ 
marked. 

" He raised his eyebrows forgivingly: * I don’t say; 1 
don’t say. The young man in question might have had 
the best dispositions — the best dispositions/ he repeated, 
wheezing a little. 

u 1 I am glad to see you taking a lenient view/ I said. 
*His own feeling in the matter was — ah! — hopeful, 

and . . .’ 

“ The shuffle of his feet under the table interrupted me. 
He drew up his heavy eyelids. Drew up, I say — no other 
expression can describe the steady deliberation of the act 
— and at last was disclosed completely to me. I was con¬ 
fronted by two narrow grey circlets, like two tiny steel 
rings, around the profound blackness of the pupils. The 
sharp glance, coming from that massive body, gave a notion 
of extreme efficiency, like a razor-edge on a battle-axe. 
* Pardon/ he said punctiliously. His right hand went up, 
and he swayed forward. ‘ Allow me ... I contended that 
one may get on knowing very well that one’s courage does 
not come of itself (ne vient pas tout seul). There’s nothing 
much in that to get upset about. One truth the more ought 
not to make life impossible. . . . But the honour — the 
honour, monsieur! . . . The honour . . . that is real — 
that is! And what life may be worth when ’ ... he got on 
his feet with a ponderous impetuosity, as a startled ox 
might scramble up from the grass . . . ‘ when the honour is 
gone — ah qal par exempts — I can offer no opinion. I can 
offer no opinion — because — monsieur — I know nothing 
of it.’ 

"I had risen too, and, trying to throw infinite politeness 
into our attitudes, we faced each other mutely, like two china 
dogs on a mantelpiece. Hang the fellow! he had pricked 


138 


LORD JIM 


tlie "bubble. The blight of futility that lies in wait for 
men’s speeches had fallen upon our conversation, and made 
it a thing of empty sounds. ‘ Very well,’ I said, with a dis- 
concerted smile; ‘ but couldn’t it reduce itself to not being 
found out ? ’ He made as if to retort readily, but when he 
spoke he had changed his mind. ‘This, monsieur, is too 
line for me — much above me — I don’t think about it.’ 
He bowed heavily over his cap, which he held before him 
by the peak, between the thumb and the forefinger of his 
wounded hand. I bowed too. We bowed together: we 
scraped our feet at each other with much ceremony, while a 
dirty specimen of a waiter looked on critically, as though 
he had paid for the performance. ‘ Serviteur,’ said the 
Frenchman. Another scrape. ‘Monsieur’ . . . ‘Monsieur.’ 
. . . The glass door swung behind his burly back. I saw 
the southerly buster get hold of him and drive him down 
wind with his hand to his head, his shoulders braced, and 
the tails of his coat blown hard against his legs. 

“ I sat down again, alone and discouraged — discouraged 
about Jim’s case. If you wonder that after more than 
three years it had preserved its actuality, you must know 
that I had seen him only very lately. I had come straight 
from Samarang, where I had loaded a cargo for Sydney • 
an utterly uninteresting bit of business, — what Charley 
here would call one of my rational transactions — and in 
Samarang I had seen something of Jim. He was then 
working for De Jongh, on my recommendation. Water- 
clerk. ‘My representative afloat,’ as De Jongh called him. 
You can’t imagine a mode of life more barren of conso¬ 
lation, less capable of being invested with a spark of 
glamour — unless it be the business of an insurance can¬ 
vasser. Little Bob Stanton — Charley here knew him well 
— had gone through that experience. The same wh<? got 


LORD JIM 


139 


drowned afterwards trying to save a lady’s-maid in the 
Sephora disaster. A case of collision on a hazy morning off 
the Spanish coast — you may remember. All the passen¬ 
gers had been packed tidily into the boats and shoved clear 
of the ship, when Bob sheered alongside again and scram¬ 
bled back on deck to fetch that girl. How she had been 
left behind I can’t make out; anyhow, she had gone com¬ 
pletely crazy — wouldn’t leave the ship — held to the rail 
like grim death. The wrestling match could be seen plainly 
from the boats; but poor Bob was the shortest chief mate 
in the merchant service, and the woman stood five feet ten 
in her shoes and was as strong as a horse, I’ve been told. 
So it went on, pull devil, pull baker, the wretched girl 
screaming all the time, and Bob letting out a yell now and 
then to warn his boat to keep well clear of the ship. One 
of the hands told me, hiding a smile at the recollection, ‘ It 
was for all the world, sir, like a naughty youngster fighting 
with his mother.’ The same old chap said that 1 At the last 
we could see that Mr. Stanton had given up hauling at the 
gal, and just stood by looking at her, watchful like. We 
thought afterwards he must’ve been reckoning that, maybe, 
the rush of water would tear her away from the rail by 
and by and give him a show to save her. We daren’t come 
alongside for our life; and after a bit the old ship went 
down all on a sudden with a lurch to starboard — plop. 
The suck-in was something awful. We never saw anything 
alive or dead come up.’ Poor Bob’s spell of shore life had 
been one of the complications of a love affair, I believe. 
He fondly hoped he had done with the sea for ever, and 
made sure he had got hold of all the bliss on earth, but it 
came to canvassing in the end. Some cousin of his in 
Liverpool put him up to it. He used to tell of his experi¬ 
ences in that line. He made us laugh till we cried, and. 





140 


LORD JIM 


not altogether displeased at the effect, undersized and 
bearded to the waist like a gnome, he would tiptoe amongst 
us and say, < It’s all very well for you beggars to laugh, but 
my immortal soul was shrivelled down to the size of a 
parched pea after a week of that work.’ I don’t know how 
Jim’s soul accommodated itself to the new conditions of 
his life — I was kept too busy in getting him something to 
do that would keep body and soul together — but I am 
pretty certain his adventurous fancy was suffering all the 
pangs of starvation. It had certainly nothing to feed upon 
in this new calling. It was distressing to see him at it, 
though he tackled it with a stubborn serenity for which 1 
must give him full credit. I kept my eye on his shabby 
plodding with a sort of notion that it was a punishment for 
the heroics of his fancy — an expiation for his craving after 
more glamour than he could carry. He had loved too well 
to imagine himself a glorious racehorse, and now he was 
condemned to toil without honour like a costermonger’s 
donkey. He did it very well. He shut himself in, put his 
head down, said never a word. Very well; very well in¬ 
deed— except for certain fantastic and violent outbreaks, 
on the deplorable occasions when the irrepressible Patna 
case cropped up. Unfortunately that scandal of the East 
ern seas would not die out. And this is the reason why I 
could never feel I had done with Jim for good. 

“I sat thinking of him after the Erench lieutenant had 
left, not, however, in connection with De Jongh’s cool 
and gloomy backshop, where we had hurriedly shaken 
hands not very long ago, but as I had seen him years be¬ 
fore in the last flickers of the candle, alone with me in the 
long gallery of the Malabar House, with the chill and 
the darkness of the night at his back. The respectable 
sword of his country’s law was suspended over his head 


LORD JIM 


141 


To-morrow — or was it to-day? (midnight had slipped 
by long before we parted) — the marble-faced police 
magistrate, after distributing fines and terms of impris¬ 
onment in the assault-and-battery case, would take up 
the awful weapon and smite his bowed neck. Our com¬ 
munion in the night was uncommonly like a last vigil 
with a condemned man. He was guilty, too. He was 
guilty—as I had told myself repeatedly, guilty and 
done for; nevertheless, I wished to spare him the mere 
detail of a formal execution. I don’t pretend to explain 
the reasons of my desire — I don’t think I could; but 
if you haven’t got a sort of notion by this time, then I 
must have been very obscure in my narrative, or you 
too sleepy to seize upon the sense of my words. I don’t 
defend my morality. There was no morality in the im¬ 
pulse which induced me to lay before him Brierly’s plan of 
evasion — I may call it — in all its primitive simplicity. 
There were the rupees — absolutely ready in my pocket 
and very much at his service. Oh! a loan; a loan, of 
course—and if an introduction to a man (in Rangoon) 
who could put some work in his way. . . . Why! with 
the greatest pleasure. I had pen, ink, and paper in my 
room on the first floor. And even while I was speaking 
I was impatient to begin the letter: day, month, year, 
2.30 a.m. . . . for the sake of our old friendship I ask 
you to put some work in the way of Mr. James So-and-so, 
in whom, &c., &c. ... I was even ready to write in that 
strain about him. If he had not enlisted my sympathies 
he had done better for himself — he had gone to the very 
fount and origin of that sentiment, he had reached the 
secret sensibility of my egoism. I am concealing nothing 
from you, because were I to do so my action would appear 
more unintelligible than any man’s action has the right to 




142 


LORD JIM 


be, and — m the second place — to-morrow you shall forget 
my sincerity along with the other lessons of the past. In 
this transaction, to speak grossly and precisely, I was the 
irreproachable man; but the subtle intentions of my im¬ 
morality were defeated by the moral simplicity of the crim¬ 
inal. No doubt he was selfish, too, but his selfishness had 
a higher origin, a more lofty aim. I discovered that, say 
what I would, he was eager to go through the ceremony 
of execution; and I didn’t say much, for I felt that in 
argument his youth would tell against me heavily: he 
believed where I had already ceased to doubt. There 
was something fine in the wildness of his unexpressed, 
hardly formulated hope. ‘ Clear out! Couldn’t think of 
it,’ he said, with a shake of the head. ‘ I make you an offer 
for which I neither demand nor expect any sort of grati¬ 
tude,’ I said; ‘ you shall repay me the money when con¬ 
venient, and . . . ’ ‘ Awfully good of you,’ he muttered, 

without looking up. I watched him narrowly; the future 
must have appeared horribly uncertain to him ; but he did 
not falter, as though indeed there had been nothing wrong 
with his heart. I felt angrjr — not for the first time that 
night. 4 The whole wretched business,’ I said, ‘ is bitter 
enough, I should think, for a man of your kind. . . . ’ ‘It 
is,'it is,’ he whispered twice, with his eyes fixed on the 
floor. It was heartrending. He towered above the light, 
and I could see the down on his cheek, the colour mantling 
warm under the smooth skin of his face. Believe me or 
not, I say it was outrageously heartrending. It provoked 
me to brutality. ‘Yes,’ I said; ‘and allow me to confess 
that I am totally unable to imagine what advantage you 
can expect from this licking of the dregs.’ ‘Advantage!’ 
he murmured out of his stillness. ‘ I am dashed if I do,’ I 
said, enraged. ‘ I’ve been trying to tell you all there is in 


LORD JIM 


143 


It,’ he went on slowly, as if meditating something unan¬ 
swerable. ‘But after all, it is my trouble/ I opened my 
mouth to retort, and discovered suddenly that I’d lost all 
confidence in myself; and it was as if he too had given me 
up, for he mumbled like a man thinking half aloud. ‘ Went 
away . . . went into hospitals. . . . Not one of them 
would face it. . . . They! . . . 9 He moved his hand 
slightly to imply disdain. ‘ But I’ve got to get over this 
thing, and I mustn’t shirk any of it or ... I won’t shirk 
any of it.’ He was silent. He gazed as though he had 
been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the passing 
expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution, — reflected 
them in turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding 
passage of unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by 
deceitful ghosts, by austere shades. ‘Oh! nonsense, my 
I dear fellow,’ I began. He had a movement of impatience. 
‘You don’t seem to understand/ he said incisively; then 
looking at me without a wink, ‘ I may have jumped, but I 
don’t run away.’ ‘ I meant no offence,’ I said; and added 
stupidly, ‘ Better men than you have found it expedient to 
run, at times.’ He coloured all over, while in my confusion 
I half-choked myself with my own tongue. ‘ Perhaps so,’ 
he said at last; ‘ I am not good enough; I can’t afford it. 
I am bound to fight this thing down —I am fighting it now? 
I got out of my chair and felt stiff all over. The silence 
was embarrassing, and to put an end to it I imagined noth¬ 
ing better but to remark, ‘ I had no idea it was so late,’ in 
an airy tone. . . . ‘ I daresay you have had enough of this,’ 
he said brusquely: ‘ and to tell you the truth ’ — he began 
to look round for his hat — ‘so have I.’ 

“ Well! he had refused this unique offer. He had struct 
aside my helping hand; he was ready to go now, and be¬ 
yond the balustrade the night seemed to wait for him very 



144 


LORD JIM 


still, as though he had been marked down for its prey. 1 
heard his voice. ( Ah! here it is.’ He had found his hat. 
Eor a few seconds we hung in the wind. 1 What will you 
do after — after . . .’ I asked very low. ‘Go to the dogs 
as likely as not,’ he answered in a gruff mutter. I had 
recovered my wits in a measure, and judged best to take it 
lightly. ‘ Pray remember,’ I said, ‘ that I should like very 
much to see you again before you go.’ ‘ I don’t know what’s 
to prevent you. The damned thing won’t make me invisi¬ 
ble,’ he said with intense bitterness, — ‘ no such luck.’ And 
then at the moment of taking leave he treated me to a 
ghastly muddle of dubious stammers and movements, to 
an awful display of hesitations. God forgive him — me! 
He had taken it into his fanciful head that I was likely to 
make some difficulty as to shaking hands. It was too awful 
for words. I believe I shouted suddenly at him as you 
would bellow to a man you saw about to walk over a cliff; 
I remember our voices being raised, the appearance of a 
miserable grin on his face, a crushing clutch on my hand, a 
nervous laugh. The candle spluttered out, and the thing 
was over at last, with a groan that floated up to me in the 
dark. He got himself away somehow. The night swal¬ 
lowed his form. He was a horrible bungler. Horrible. 
I heard the quick crunch-crunch of the gravel under his 
boots. He was running. Absolutely running, with nowhere 
to go to. And he was not yet four-and-twenty.” 


CHAPTER XIV 

“ I slept little, hurried over my breakfast, and after a 
slight hesitation gave up my early morning visit to my 
ship. It was really very wrong of me, because, though my 
chief mate was an excellent man all round, he was the 



LORD JIM 


145 


victim of such black imaginings that if he did not get a 
letter from his wife at the expected time he would go quite 
distracted with rage and jealousy, lose all grip on the work, 
quarrel with all hands, and either weep in his cabin or 
develop such a ferocity of temper as all but drove the crew 
to the verge of mutiny. The thing had always seemed in¬ 
explicable to me : they had been married thirteen years ; I 
had a glimpse of her once, and honestly, I couldn’t conceive 
a man abandoned enough to plunge into sin for the sake of 
such an unattractive person. I don’t know whether I have 
not dope wrong by refraining from putting that view before 
poor Selvin: the man made a little hell on earth for him¬ 
self, and I also suffered indirectly; but some sort of, no 
doubt, false delicacy, prevented me. The marital relations 
of seamen would make an interesting subject, and I could 
tell you instances. . . . However, this is not the place, nor 
the time, and we are concerned with Jim — who was un¬ 
married. If his imaginative conscience or his pride; if all 
the extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the 
disastrous familiars of his youth, would not let him run 
away from the block, I, who of course can’t be suspected of 
such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go and see his 
head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn’t 
hope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested, or 
3 ven frightened — though, as long as there is any life be¬ 
fore one, a jolly good fright now and then is a salutary dis¬ 
cipline. But neither did I expect to be so awfully depressed. 
The bitterness of his punishment was in its chill and mean 
atmosphere. The real significance of crime is in its being 
a breach of faith with the community of mankind, and 
from that point of view he was no mean traitor, but his 
execution was a hole-and-corner affair. There was no high 
Scaffolding, no scarlet cloth (did they haye scarlet cloth on 


,46 


LOKD JIM 


Tower Hill ? They should have had), no awe-strieken mul¬ 
titude to be horrified at his guilt and be moved to tears at 
his fate — no air of sombre retribution. There was, as I 
walked along, the clear sunshine, a brilliance too passionate 
to be consoling, the streets full of jumbled bits of colour 
like a damaged kaleidoscope: yellow, green, blue, dazzling 
white, the brown nudity of an undraped shoulder, a bullock- 
cart with a red canopy, a company of native infantry in a 
drab body with dark heads marching in dusty laced boots, 
a native policeman in a sombre uniform of scanty cut and 
belted in patent leather, who looked up at me with orientally 
pitiful eyes as though his migrating spirit were suffering 
exceedingly from that unforeseen — what d’ye call ’em ? — 
avatar — incarnation. Under the shade of a lonely tree in the 
courtyard, the villagers connected with the assault case sat in 
a picturesque group, looking like a chromo-lithograph of a 
camp in a book of Eastern travel. One missed the obligatory 
thread of smoke in the foreground and the pack-animals 
grazing. A blank yellow wall rose behind, overtopping the 
tree, reflecting the glare. The court-room was sombre, seemed 
more vast. High up in the dim space the punkahs were 
swaying short to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a 
draped figure, dwarfed by the bare walls, remained with- 
out stirring amongst the rows of empty benches, as it 
absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had 
been beaten, an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved 
head, one fat breast bare and, bright yellow caste-mark 
above the bridge of his nose, sat in pompous immobility: 
only his eyes glittered, rolling in the gloom, and the nostrils 
dilated and collapsed violently as he breathed. Brierly 
dropped into his seat looking done up, as though he had 
spent the night in sprinting on a cinder-track. The pious 
sailing-ship skipper appeared excited and made uneasy 


LOUD JIM 


147 


movements, as if restraining with difficulty an impulse ta 
stand up and exhort us earnestly to prayer and repentance. 
The head of the magistrate, delicately pale under the neatly 
arranged hair, resembled the head of a hopeless invalid 
after he had been washed and brushed and propped up in 
bed. He moved aside the vase of flowers — a bunch of 
purple with a few pink blossoms on long stalks — and seiz¬ 
ing in both hands a long sheet of bluish paper, ran his ey« 
over it, propped his forearms on the edge of the desk, and 
began to read aloud in an even, distinct, and careless voice. 

“ By Jove! For all my foolishness about scaffolds and 
heads rolling off — I assure you it was infinitely worse 
than a beheading. A heavy sense of finality brooded over 
all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest and safety following 
the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the cold 
vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sen¬ 
tence of exile. This is how I looked at it that morning 
— and even now I seem to see an undeniable vestige of 
truth in that exaggerated view of a common occurrence. 
You may imagine how strongly I felt this at the time. 
Perhaps it is for that reason that I could not bring myself 
to admit the finality. The thing was always with me, I 
was always eager to take opinion on it, as though it had 
not been practically settled: individual opinion — internar 
tional opinion — by Jove ! That Frenchman’s, for instance. 
His own country’s pronouncement was uttered in the pas¬ 
sionless and definite phraseology a machine would use, if 
machines could speak. The head of the magistrate was 
half hidden by the paper, his brow was like alabaster. 

“ There were several questions before the Court. The 
first as to whether the ship was in every respect fit and 
seaworthy for the voyage. The Court found she was not 
The next point, I remember, was. whether up to the time 


148 


LOKD JIM 


of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper 
and seamanlike care. They said Yes to that, goodness 
knows why, and then they declared that there was no 
evidence to show the exact cause of the accident. A float¬ 
ing derelict probably. I myself remember that a Norwe¬ 
gian barque bound out with a cargo of pitch-pine had 
been given up as missing about that time, and it was just 
the sort of craft that would capsize in a squall and float 
bottom up for months — a kind of maritime ghoul on the 
prowl to kill ships in the dark. Such wandering corpses 
are common enough in the North Atlantic, which is haunted 
by all the terrors of the sea, — fogs, icebergs, dead ships 
bent upon mischief, and long sinister gales that fasten upon 
one like a vampire till all the strength and the spirit and 
even hope are gone, and one feels like the empty shell of 
a man. But there — in those seas — the incident was rare 
enough to resemble a special arrangement of a malevolent 
providence, which, unless it had for its object the killing 
of a donkey-man and the bringing of worse than death upon 
Jim, appeared an utterly aimless piece of deviltry. This 
view occurring to me took off my attention. For a time 
I was aware of the magistrate’s voice as a sound merely ; 
but in a moment it shaped itself into distinct words . . . 
f in utter disregard of their plain duty,’ it said. The next 
sentence escaped me somehow, and then . . . 1 abandoning 
in the moment of danger the lives and property confided 
to their charge 9 . . . went on the voice evenly, and stopped. 
A pair of eyes under the white forehead shot darkly a 
glance above the edge of the paper. I looked for Jim 
hurriedly, as though I had expected him to disappear. He 
was very still — but he was there. He sat pink and fair 
and extremely attentive. ‘ Therefore, . . .’ began the voice 
emphatically. He .stared with parted lips, hanging udob 


LORD JIM 


149 


the words of the man behind the desk. These came out 
into the stillness wafted on the wind made by the punkahs, 
and I, watching for their effect upon him, caught only the 
fragments of official language. . . . ‘The Court . . . Gus¬ 
tav So-and-so, master . . . native of Germany, . . . James 
So-and-so . . . mate . . . certificates cancelled.’ A silence 
fell. The magistrate had dropped the paper, and leaning 
sideways on the arm of his chair, began to talk with Brierly 
easily. People started to move out; others were pushing 
in, and I also made for the door. Outside I stood still, 
and when Jim passed me on his way to the gate, I caught 
at his arm and detained him. The look he gave discom¬ 
posed me as though I had been responsible for his state: 
he looked at me as if I had been the embodied evil of life. 
‘IPs all over/ I stammered. ‘Yes/ he said thickly. ‘And 
now let no man . . .’ He jerked his arm out of my grasp. 
I watched his back as he went away. It was a long street, 
and he remained in sight for some time. He walked rather 
slow, and straddling his legs a little, as if he had found 
it difficult to keep a straight line. Just before I lost him 
I fancied he staggered a bit. 

“ ‘ Man overboard/ said a deep voice behind me. Turn¬ 
ing round, I saw a fellow I knew slightly, a West Aus¬ 
tralian ; Chester was his name. He, too, had been looking 
after Jim. He was a man with an immense girth of chest, 
a rugged, clean-shaved face of mahogany colour, and two 
blunt tufts of iron-grey, thick, wiry hairs on his upper lip. 
He had been pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler too, I believe; 
in his own words — anything and everything a man may 
be at sea, but a pirate. The Pacific, north and south, was 
his proper hunting-ground; but he had wandered so far 
afield looking for a cheap steamer to buy. Lately he had 
discovered — so he said — a guano island somewhere, but 


LORD JIM 


150 

its approaches were dangerous, and the anchorage, such as 
it was, could not be considered safe, to say the least of it. 

< As good as a gold-mine,’ he would exclaim. ‘ Right bang 
in the middle of the Walpole Reefs, and if it’s true enough 
that you can get no holding-ground anywhere in less than 
forty fathom, then what of that ? There are the hurricanes, 
too. But it’s a first-rate thing. As good as a gold-mine — 
better! Yet there’s not a fool of them that will see it. 
I can’t get a skipper or a shipowner to go near the place. 
So I made up my mind to cart the blessed stuff myself.’ 
. . . This was what he required a steamer for, and I knew 
he was just then negotiating enthusiastically with a Parsee 
firm for an old, brig-rigged, sea anachronism of ninety 
horse-power. We had met and spoken together several 
times. He looked knowingly after Jim. ‘ Takes it to 
heart?’ he asked scornfully. ‘Very much,’ I said. ‘Then 
he’s no good,’ he opined. ‘ What’s all the to-do about ? A 
bit of ass’s skin. That never yet made a man. You must 
see things exactly as they are — if you don’t you may just 
as well give in at once. You will never do anything in this 
world. Look at me. I made it a practice never to take any¬ 
thing to heart.’ ‘Yes,’I said,‘you see things as they are.’ ‘I 
wish I could see my partner coming along, that’s what I wish 
to see,’ he said. ‘ Know my partner ? Old Robinson. Yes; 
the Robinson. Don’t you know ? The notorious Robinson. 
The man who smuggled more opium and bagged more seals 
in his time than any loose Johnny now alive. They say he 
used to board the sealing-schooners up Alaska way when 
the fog was so thick that the Lord God, He alone, could 
tell one man from another. Holy Terror Robinson. That’s 
the man. He is with me in that guano thing. The best 
chance he ever came across in his life.’ He put his lips to 
my ear. ‘ Cannibal ? — well, they used to give him the 


LORD JIM 


151 


name years and years ago. You remember the story ? A 
shipwreck on the west side of Stewart Island; that’s right; 
seven of them got ashore, and it seems they did not get on 
very well together. Some men are too cantankerous for 
anything — don’t know how to make the best of a bad job 
— don’t see things as they are — as they are, my boy ! And 
then what’s the consequence ? Obvious! Trouble, trouble; 
as likely as not a knock on the head; and serve ’em right 
too. That sort is the most useful when it’s dead. The 
story goes that a boat of Her Majesty’s ship Wolverine 
found him kneeling on the kelp, naked as the day he was 
born, and chanting some psalm-tune or other; light snow 
was falling at the time. He waited till the boat was an 
oar’s length from the shore, and then up and away. They 
chased him for an hour up and down the boulders, till 
a marine flung a stone that took him behind the ear provi¬ 
dentially and knocked him senseless. Alone ? Of course. 
But that’s like that tale of sealing-schooners; the Lord 
God knows the right and the wrong of that story. The 
cutter did not investigate much. They wrapped him in a 
boat-cloak and took him off as quick as they could, with a 
dark night coming on, the weather threatening, and the 
ship firing recall guns every five minutes. Three weeks 
afterwards he was as well as ever. He didn’t allow any 
fuss that was made on shore to upset him; he just shut 
his lips tight, and let people screech. It was bad enough 
to have lost his ship, and all he was worth besides, withou* 
paying attention to the hard names they called him. That’s 
the man for me.’ He lifted his arm for a signal to some 
one down the street. ‘He’s got a little money, so I had 
to let him into my thing. Had to! It would have been 
sinful to throw away such a find, and I was cleaned out 
myself. It cut me to the quick, but I could see the matter 


152 


LORD JIM 


just as it was, and if I must share — thinks I — with any 
man, then give me Robinson. I left him at breakfast in 
the hotel to come to court, because I’ve an idea. . . . Ah J 
Good morning, Captain Robinson. . . . Friend of mine, Cap 
tain Robinson.’ 

“ An emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill, a solah 
topi with a green-lined rim on a head trembling with age, 
joined us after crossing the street in a trotting shuffle, 
and stood propped with both hands on the handle of an 
umbrella. A white beard with amber streaks hung lumpily 
down to his waist. He blinked his creased eyelids at me 
in a bewildered way. ‘ How do you do ? how do you do ? ’ 
he piped amiably, and tottered. ‘ A little deaf,’ said Chester 
aside. ‘ Did you drag him over six thousand miles to get 
a cheap steamer?’ I asked. ‘I would have taken him 
twice round the world as soon as look at him,’ said Chester 
with immense energy. ‘The steamer will be the making 
of us, my lad. Is it my fault that every skipper and ship¬ 
owner in the whole of blessed Australasia turns out a 
blamed fool ? Once I talked for three hours to a man in 
Auckland. “ Send a ship,” I said, “ send a ship. I’ll give 
you half of the first cargo for yourself, free gratis for 
nothing — just to make a good start.” Says he, “ I wouldn’t 
do it if there was no other place on earth to send a ship to.” 
Perfect ass, of course. Rocks, currents, no anchorage, sheer 
cliff to lay to, no insurance company would take the risk, 
didn’t see how he could get loaded under three years. Ass! 
I nearly went on my knees to him. “ But look at the thing 
as it is,” says I. “ Damn rocks and hurricanes. Look at 
it as it is. There’s guano there, Queensland sugar-planters 
would fight for — fight for on the quay, I tell you.” . . . 
What can you do with a fool ? . . . “ That’s one of your 
little jokes, Chester,” he says. . . . Joke! I could have 


LORD JIM 


133 


*ept Ask Captain Robinson here. . . . And there was 
another shipowning fellow — a fat chap in a white waist¬ 
coat in Wellington, who seemed to think I was up to some 
swindle or other. “ I don’t know what sort of fool you’re 
looking for,” he says, “but I am busy just now. Good 
morning.” I longed to take him in my two hands and 
smash him through the window of his own office. But I 
didn’t. I was as mild as a curate. “ Think of it,” says I. 
“ Do think it over. I’ll call to-morrow.” He grunted some¬ 
thing about being “ out all day.” On the stairs I felt ready 
to beat my head against the wall from vexation. Captain 
Robinson here can tell you. It was awful to think of all 
that lovely stuff lying waste under the sun — stuff that 
would send the sugar-cane shooting sky-high. The making 
of Queensland! The making of Queensland. And in Bris¬ 
bane, where I went to have a last try, they gave me the 
name of a lunatic. Idiots ! The only sensible man I came 
across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken- 
down swell he was, I fancy. Hey! Captain Robinson? 
You remember I told you about my cabby in Brisbane — 
don’t you ? The chap had a wonderful eye for things. He 
saw it all in a jiffy. It was a real pleasure to talk with 
him. One evening after a devil of a day amongst ship¬ 
owners I felt so bad that, says I, “ I must get drunk. Come 
along; I must get drunk, or I’ll go mad.” “I am your 
man,” he says; “go ahead.” I don’t know what I would 
have done without him. Hey ! Captain Robinson.’ 

“He poked the ribs of his partner. ‘He! he! he!’ 
laughed the Ancient, looked aimlessly down the street, then 
peered at me doubtfully with sad, dim pupils. ... ‘He! 
he! he!’ . . . He leaned heavier on the umbrella, and 
dropped his gaze on the ground. I needn’t tell you I had 
tried to get away several times, but Chester had foiled 


154 


LORD JIM 


every attempt by simply catching hold of my coat. ‘ One 
minute. I’ve a notion.’ ‘ What’s your infernal notion?’ 
I exploded at last. 4 If you think I am going in with you 
. . .’ ‘ No, no, my boy. Too late, if you wanted ever so 

much. We’ve got a steamer.’ ‘ You’ve got the ghost of a 
steamer,’ I said. ‘Good enough for a start — there’s no 
superior nonsense about us. Is there, Captain Robinson ? ’ 
4 No! no! no!’ croaked the old man without lifting his 
eyes, and the senile tremble of his head became almost 
fierce with determination. ‘I understand you know that 
young chap,’ said Chester, with a nod at the street from 
which Jim had disappeared long ago. ‘ He’s been having 
grub with you in the Malabar last night—so I was told.’ 

“ I said that was true; and after remarking that he too 
liked to live well and in style, only that, for the present, he 
had to be saving of every penny — ‘ none too many for the 
business! Isn’t that so, Captain Robinson?’ — he squared 
his shoulders and stroked his dumpy moustache, while the 
notorious Robinson, coughing at his side, clung more than 
ever to the handle of the umbrella, and seemed ready to 
subside passively into a heap of old bones. ‘You see the 
old chap has all the money,’ whispered Chester confiden¬ 
tially. ‘ I’ve been cleaned out trying to engineer the dratted 
thing. But wait a bit, wait a bit. The good time is com¬ 
ing.’ ... He seemed suddenly astonished at the signs of 
impatience I gave. ‘Oh, crakee!’ he cried; ‘I am telling 
you of the biggest thing that ever was, and you . . .’ ‘I 
have an appointment,’ I pleaded mildly. ‘ What of that ? ’ 
he asked with genuine surprise; ‘let it wait.’ ‘That’s 
exactly what I am doing now,’ I remarked; ‘hadn’t you 
better tell me what it is you want ? ’ ‘ Buy twenty hotels 

like that,’ he growled to himself; ‘ and every joker boarding 
in them too — twenty times over.’ He lifted his head 


LORD JIM 


155 


smartly. 1 1 want that young chap.’ *1 don’t understand,’ 
I said. ‘ He’s no good, is he ? ’ said Chester, crisply. ‘ I 
know nothing about it,’ 1 protested. ‘ Why, you told me 
yourself he was taking it to heart,’ argued Chester. ‘ Well, 
in my opinion a chap who . . . Anyhow, he can’t be much 
good; but then you see I am on the look-out for somebody, 
and I’ve just got a thing that will suit him. I’ll give him 
a job on my island.’ He nodded significantly. ‘ I’m going 
to dump forty coolies there — if I’ve to steal ’em. Some¬ 
body must work the stuff. Oh! I mean to act square: 
wooden shed, corrugated iron roof.— I know a man in Hobart 
who will take my bill at six months for the materials. 
I do. Honour bright. Then there’s the water-supply. I’ll 
have to fly round and get somebody to trust me for half-a- 
dozen second-hand iron tanks. Catch rain-water, hey ? Let 
him take charge. Make him supreme boss over the coolies. 
Good idea, isn’t it ? What do yo*i say ? ’ ‘ There are 
whole years when not a drop of rain falls on Walpole,’ I 
said, too amazed to laugh. He bit his lip and seemed 
bothered. ‘ Oh, well, I will fix up something for them — 
or land a supply. Hang it all! That’s not the question.’ 

“I said nothing. I had a rapid vision of Jim perched 
Dn a shadowless rock, up to his knees in guano, with the 
screams of sea-birds in his ears, the incandescent ball of the 
sun above his head; the empty sky and the empty ocean 
all a-quiver, simmering together in the heat as far as the 
eye could reach. ‘ I wouldn’t advise my worst enemy . . .’ 
I began. ‘ What’s the matter with you ? ’ cried Chester; 
*1 mean to give him a good screw — that is, as soon as the 
thing is set going, of course. It’s as easy as falling off a 
log. Simply nothing to do; two six-shooters in his belt 
. . . Surely he wouldn’t be afraid of anything forty coolies 
could do—with two six-shooters and he the only armed 



156 


LORD JIM 


man too! It’s much better than it looks. I want you 
to help me to talk him over.’ ‘No!’ I shouted. Old 
Robinson lifted his bleared eyes dismally for a moment; 
Chester looked at me with infinite contempt. ‘So you 
wouldn’t advise him? * he uttered slowly. ‘ Certainly not,’ 
I answered, as indignant as though he had requested me to 
help murder somebody; ‘moreover, I am sure he wouldn’t. 
He is badly cut up, but he isn’t mad as far as I know.’ ‘He 
is no earthly good for anything,’ Chester mused aloud. 
‘He would just have done for me. If you only could see a 
thing as it is, you would see it’s the very thing for him. 
And besides . . . Why! it’s the most splendid, sure chance 
. . .’ He got angry suddenly. ‘I must have a man. 
There! . . .’ He stamped his foot and smiled unpleasantly 
‘ Anyhow, I could guarantee the island wouldn’t sink under 
him — and I believe he is a bit particular on that point.* 

‘ Good morning,’ I said curtly. He looked at me as though 
I had been an incomprehensible fool. . . . ‘Must be moving, 
Captain Robinson,’ he yelled suddenly into the old man’s 
ear. ‘These Parsee Johnnies are waiting for us to clinch 
the bargain.’ He took his partner under the arm with a 
firm grip, swung him round, and, unexpectedly, leered at 
me over his shoulder. ‘ I was trying to do him a kindness,’ 
he asserted, with an air and tone that made my blood boil. 
‘Thank you for nothing — in his name,’ I rejoined. ‘Oh! 
you are devilish smart,’ he sneered; ‘but you are like the 
rest of them. Too much in the clouds. See what you will 
do with him.’ ‘I don’t know that I want to do anything 
with him.’ ‘Don’t you?’ he spluttered; his grey moustache 
bristled with anger, and by his side the notorious Robinson 
propped on the umbrella, stood with his back to me, as 
patient and still as a worn-out cab-horse. ‘ I haven’t found 
a guano island,’ I said. ‘It’s my belief you wouldn’t know 


LORD JIM 


157 


jne if you were led right up to it by the hand/ he riposted 
quickly; ( and in this world you’ve got to see a thing first, 
before you can make use of it. Got to see it through and 
through at that, neither more nor less.’ ‘ And get others to 
Bee it too/ I insinuated, with a glance at the bowed back 
by his side. Chester snorted at me. ‘ His eyes are right 
enough — don’t you worry. He ain’t a puppy.’ 1 Oh dear, 
no! ’ I said. ‘ Come along, Captain Robinson/ he shouted, 
with a sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old 
jaan’s hat; the Holy Terror gave a submissive little jump. 
The ghost of a steamer was waiting for them, Fortune on 
that fair isle! They made a curious pair of Argonauts. 
Chester strode on leisurely, well set up, portly, and of con¬ 
quering mien; the other, long, wasted, drooping, and hooked 
to his arm, shuffled his withered shanks with desperate 


CHAPTER XV 

u I did not start in search of Jim at once, only because I 
had really an appointment which I could not neglect. Then, 
as ill luck would have it, in my agent’s office I was fastened 
upon by a fellow fresh from Madagascar with a little scheme 
for a wonderful piece of business. It had something to do 
with cattle and cartridges and a Prince Ravonalo something; 
but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity of some 
admiral — Admiral Pierre, I think: Everything turned on 
that, and the chap couldn’t find words strong enough to 
express his confidence. He had globular eyes starting out 
of his head with a fishy glitter, bumps on his forehead, and 
wore his long hair brushed back without a parting. He had 
% favourite phrase which he kept on repeating triumphantly, 



158 


LORD JIM 


‘The minimum of risk with the maximum of profit is my 
motto. What ? ’ He made my head ache, spoiled my tiffin, 
but got his own out of me all right; and as soon as I had 
shaken him off, I made straight for the water-side. I caught 
sight of Jim leaning over the parapet of the quay. Three 
native boatmen quarrelling over five annas were making an 
awful row at his elbow. He didn’t hear me come up, but 
spun round as if the slight contact of my finger had released 
a catch. ‘ I was looking,’ he stammered. I don’t remember 
what I said, not much anyhow, but he made no difficulty in 
following me to the hotel. 

“ He followed me as manageable as a little child, with as 
obedient air, with no sort of manifestation, rather as though 
he had been waiting for me there to come along and carry 
him off. I need not have been so surprised as I was at his 
tractability. On all the round earth, which to some seems 
so big and that others affect to consider as rather smaller 
than a mustard-seed, he had no place where he could — what 
shall I say ? — where he could withdraw. That’s it! With¬ 
draw— be alone with his loneliness. He walked by my 
side very calm, glancing here and there, and once turned his 
head to look after a Sidiboy fireman in a cutaway coat and 
yellowish trousers, whose black face had silky gleams like 
a lump of anthracite coal. I doubt, however, whether he 
saw anything, or even remained all the time aware of my. 
companionship, because if I had not edged him to the left 
here, or pulled him to the right there, I believe he would 
have gone straight before him in any direction till stopped 
by a wall or some other obstacle. I steered him into my 
bedroom, and sat down at once to write letters. This was 
the only place in the world (unless, perhaps, the Walpole 
Reef — but that was not so handy) where he could have it 
out with himself without being bothered by the rest of the 


LORD JIM 


159 


universe. The damned thing — as he had expressed it — 
had not made him invisible, but I behaved exactly as though 
he were. No sooner in my chair I bent over my writing- 
desk like a mediaeval scribe, and, but for the movement of 
the hand holding the pen, remained anxiously quiet. I 
can’t say I was frightened; but I certainly kept as still as 
if there had been something dangerous in the room, that at 
the first hint of a movement on my part would be provoked 
to pounce upon me. There was not much in the room — 
you know how these bedrooms are — a sort of four-poster 
bedstead under a mosquito-net, two or three chairs, the table 
I was writing at, a bare floor. A glass door opened on an 
upstairs verandah, and he stood with his face to it, having 
a hard time with all possible privacy. Dusk fell; I lit a 
candle with the greatest economy of movement and as much 
prudence as though it were an illegal proceeding. There is 
no doubt that he had a very hard time of it, and so had I, 
even to the point, I must own, of wishing him to the devil, 
or on Walpole Reef, at least. It occurred to me once or 
twice that, after all, Chester was, perhaps, the man to 
deal effectively with such a disaster. That strange idealist 
had found a practical use for it at once, unerringly — as it 
were. It was enough to make one suspect that, maybe, he 
really could see the true aspect of things that appeared 
mysterious or utterly hopeless to less imaginative persons. 
I wrote and wrote; I liquidated all the arrears of my corre¬ 
spondence, and then went on writing to people who had no 
reason whatever to expect from me a gossipy letter about 
nothing at all. At times I stole a sidelong glance. He was 
rooted to the spot, but convulsive shudders ran down his 
back; his shoulders would heave suddenly. He was fighting, 
he was fighting—mostly for his breath, as it seemed. The 
massive shadows, cast all one way from the straight flame 


160 


LORD JIM 


of the candle, seemed possessed of gloomy consciousness* 
the immobility of the furniture had to my furtive eye an air 
of attention. I was becoming fanciful in the midst of my 
industrious scribbling; and though, when the scratching of 
my pen stopped for a moment, there was complete silence 
and stillness in the room, I suffered from that profound dis¬ 
turbance and confusion of thought which is caused by a 
violent and menacing uproar — of a heavy gale at sea, for 
instance. Some of you may know what I mean, that min¬ 
gled anxiety, distress, and irritation with a sort of craven 
feeling creeping in — not pleasant to acknowledge, but which 
gives a quite special merit to one’s endurance. I don’t 
claim any merit for standing the stress of Jim’s emotions; 
I could take refuge in the letters; I could have written to 
strangers if necessary. Suddenly, as I was taking up a 
fresh sheet of notepaper, I heard a low sound, the first sound 
that, since we had been shut up together, had come to my 
ears in the dim stillness of the room. I remained with my 
head down, with my hand arrested. Those who have kept 
vigil by a sickbed have heard such faint sounds in the still¬ 
ness of the night watches, sounds wrung from a racked 
body, from a weary soul. He pushed the glass door with 
such force that all the panes rang: he stepped out, and 1 
held my breath, straining my ears without knowing what 
else I expected to hear. He was really taking too much 
to heart an empty formality which to Chester’s rigorous 
criticism seemed unworthy the notice of a man who could 
see things as they were. An empty formality; a piece of 
parchment. Well, well. As to an inaccessible guano deposit, 
that was another story altogether. One could intelligibly 
break one’s heart over that. A feeble burst of many voices 
mingled with the tinkle of silver and glass floated up from 
the dining-room below; through the open door the outer edge 


LORD JIM 


161 


of the light from my candle fell on his back faintly; beyond 
all was black; he stood on the brink of a vast obscurity, 
like a lonely figure by the shore of a sombre and hopeless 
ocean. There was the Walpole Reef in it — to be sure — a 
speck in the dark void, a straw for the drowning man. My 
compassion for him took the shape of the thought that I 
wouldn’t have liked his people to see him at that moment. 
I found it trying myself. His back was no longer shaken 
by his gasps; he stood straight as an arrow, faintly visible 
and still; and the meaning of this stillness sank to the bot¬ 
tom of my soul like lead into the water, and made it so 
heavy that for a second I wished heartily that the only 
course left open for me were to pay for his funeral. Even 
the law had done with him. To bury him would have been 
such an easy kindness! It would have been so much in 
accordance with the wisdom of life, which consists in put¬ 
ting out of sight all the reminders of our folly, of our weak¬ 
ness, of our mortality; all that makes against our efficiency 
— the memory of our failures, the hints of our undying 
fears, the bodies of our dead friends. Perhaps he did take 
it too much to heart. And if so then — Chester’s offer. . . . 
At this point I took up a fresh sheet and began to write 
resolutely. There was nothing but myself between him and 
the dark ocean. I had a sense of responsibility. If I spoke, 
would that motionless and suffering youth leap into the 
obscurity — clutch at the straw ? I found out how difficult 
it may be sometimes to make a sound. There is a weird 
power in a spoken word. And why the devil not ? I was 
asking myself persistently while I drove on with my writ¬ 
ing. All at once, on the blank page, under the very point 
of the pen, the two figures of Chester and his antique part¬ 
ner, very distinct and complete, would dodge into view with 
stride and gestures, as if reproduced in the field of some 


162 


LORD JIM 


optical toy. I would watch them for a while. No! They 
were too phantasmal and extravagant to enter into any one’e 
fate. And a word carries far — very far — deals destruction 
through time as the bullets go flying through space. I said 
nothing; and he, out there with his back to the light, as if 
bound and gagged by all the invisible foes of man, made no 
stir and made no sound. ,, 


CHAPTER XVI 

“The time was coming when I should see him loved, 
trusted, admired, with a legend of strength and prowess 
forming round his name as though he had been the stuff of 
a hero. It’s true — I assure you; as true as I’m sitting 
here talking about him in vain. He, on his side, had that 
faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the 
shape of his dream, without which the earth would know 
no lover and no adventurer. He captured much honour and 
an Arcadian happiness (1 won’t say anything about inno 
cence) in the bush, and it was as good to him as the honoui 
and the Arcadian happiness of the streets to another man. 
Felicity, felicity — how shall I say it ? — is quaffed out of a 
golden cup in every latitude: the flavour is with you — 
with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you 
please. He was of the sort that would drink deep, as you 
may guess from what went before. I found him, if not 
exactly intoxicated, then at least flushed with the elixir at 
his lips. He had not obtained it at once. There had been, 
as you know, a period of probation amongst infernal ship- 
chandlers, during which he had suffered and I had worried 
about—about — my trust—you may call it. I don’t know 
that I am completely reassured now, after beholding him in 



LORD JIM 


lfi3 


all his brilliance. That was my last view of him — in a 
strong light, dominating, and yet in complete accord with 
his surroundings — with the life of the forests and 'with the 
life of men. I own that I was impressed, but I must admit 
to myself that after all this is not the lasting impression. 
He was protected by his isolation, alone of his own superior 
kind, in close touch with nature, that keeps faith on such 
easy terms with her lovers. But I cannot fix before my 
eye the image of his safety. I shall always remember him 
as seen through the open door of my room, taking, perhaps, 
too much to heart the mere consequences of his failure. I 
am pleased, of course, that some good — and even some 
splendour — came out of my endeavours; but at times it 
seems to me it would have been better for my peace of 
mind if I had not stood between him and Chester’s con¬ 
foundedly generous offer. I wonder what his exuberant 
imagination would have made of Walpole islet — that most 
hopelessly forsaken crumb of dry land on the face of the 
waters. It is not likely I would ever have heard, for, I 
must tell you, that Chester, after calling at some Australian 
port to patch up his brig-rigged sea-anachronism, steamed 
out into the Pacific with a crew of twenty-two hands all 
told, and the only news having a possible bearing upon the 
mystery of his fate was the news of a hurricane which is 
supposed to have swept in its course over the Walpole 
shoals, a month or so afterwards. Not a vestige of the 
Argonauts ever turned up; not a sound came out of the 
waste. Finis! The Pacific is the most discreet of live, 
hot-tempered oceans: the chilly Antarctic can keep a secret 
too, but more in the manner of a grave. 

“ And there is a sense of blessed finality in such discre¬ 
tion, which is what we all more or less sincerely are ready 
to admit — for what else is it that makes the idea of depth 



164 


LORD JIM 


supportable ? End! Finis! the potent word that exor¬ 
cises from the house of life the haunting shadow of fata 
This is what — notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes 
and his own earnest assurances — I miss when I look back 
upon Jim’s success. While there’s life there is hope, truly; 
but there is fear, too. I don’t mean to say that I regret my 
action, nor will I pretend that I can’t sleep o’ nights in con¬ 
sequence ; still the idea obtrudes itself that he made so 
much of his disgrace while it is the guilt alone that mat¬ 
ters. He was not — if I may say so — clear to me. He 
was not clear. And there is a suspicion he was not clear 
to himself either. There were his fine sensibilities, his fine 
feelings, his fine longings — a sort of sublimated, idealised 
selfishness. He was — if you allow me to say so — very 
fine; very fine — and very unfortunate. A little coarser 
nature would not have borne the strain; it would have had 
to come to terms with itself — with a sigh, with a grunt, or 
even with a guffaw; a still coarser one would have remained 
invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting. 

“But he was too interesting or too unfortunate to be 
thrown to the dogs, or even to Chester. I felt this while I 
sat with my face over the paper and he fought and gasped, 
struggling for his breath in that terribly stealthy way, in 
my room; I felt it when he rushed out on the verandah as 
if to fling himself over — and didn’t; I felt it more and 
more all the time he remained outside, faintly lighted on 
the background of night, as if standing on the shore of a 
sombre and hopeless sea. 

“ An abrupt heavy rumble made me lift my head. The 
noise seemed to roll away, and suddenly a searching and 
violent glare fell on the blind face of the night. The sus¬ 
tained and dazzling flickers seemed to last for an uncon¬ 
scionable time. The growl of the thunder increased steadily 


LORD JIM 


165 


while I looked at him, distinct and black, planted solidly 
upon the shores of a sea of light. At the moment of 
greatest brilliance the darkness leaped back with a culmin¬ 
ating crash, and he vanished before my dazzled eyes as 
utterly as though he had been blown to atoms. A bluster¬ 
ing sigh passed; furious hands seemed to tear at the shrubs, 
shake the tops of the trees below, slam doors, break win¬ 
dow-panes all along the front of the building. He stepped 
in, closing the door behind him, and found me bending over 
the table : my sudden anxiety as to what he would say was 
very great, and akin to a fright. ‘May I have a ciga¬ 
rette ? f he asked. I gave a push to the box without rais¬ 
ing my head. ‘ I want — want — tobacco/ he muttered. I 
became extremely buoyant. ‘Just a moment,’ I grunted 
pleasantly. He took a few steps here and there. ‘ That’s 
over,’ I heard him say. A single distant clap of thunder 
came from the sea like a gun of distress. ‘ The monsoon 
breaks up early this year,’ he remarked conversationally, 
somewhere behind me. This encouraged me to turn round, 
which I did as soon as I had finished addressing the last 
envelope. He was smoking greedily in the middle of the 
room, and though he heard the stir I made, he remained 
with his back to me for a time. 

“ ‘ Come — I carried it off pretty well,’ he said, wheeling 
suddenly. ‘Something’s paid off — not much. I wonder 
what’s to come.’ His face did not show any emotion, only 
it appeared a little darkened and swollen, as though he had 
been holding his breath. He smiled reluctantly, as it were, 
and went on while I gazed up at him mutely. . . . ‘ Thank 
you, though — your room — jolly convenient — for a chap — 
badly hipped.’ . . . The rain pattered and swished in the 
garden; a water-pipe (it must have had a hole in it) per¬ 
formed just ottside the window a parody of blubbering 



166 


LORD JIM 


woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted 
by jerky spasms of silence. . ‘ A bit of shelter/ he 

mumbled, and ceased. 

“ A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black 
framework of the windows and ebbed out without any noise. 
i was thinking how I had best approach him (I did not 
want to be flung off again) when he gave a little laugh. 
‘ No better than a vagabond now’ . . . the end of the 
cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . ‘ without a 
single — single/ he pronounced slowly; ‘ and yet . . .’ He 
paused; the rain fell with redoubled violence. ‘ Some day 
one’s bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all 
back again. Must! , he whispered distinctly, glaring at my 
boots. 

“ I did not even know what it was he wished so much to 
regain, what it was he had so terribly missed. It might 
have been so much that it was impossible to say. A piece 
of ass’s skin, according to Chester. . . . He looked up 
at me inquisitively. ‘Perhaps. If life’s long enough/ I 
muttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity. 
‘Don’t reckon too much on it.’ 

“‘Jove! I feel as if nothing could ever touch me/ he 
said in a tone of sombre conviction. ‘If this business 
couldn’t knock me over, then there’s no fear of there being 
not enough time to — climb out, and . . .* He looked 
upwards. 

“ It struck me that it is from such as he that the great 
army of waifs and strays is recruited, the army that 
marches down, down into all the gutters of the earth. As 
soon as he left my room, that ‘ bit of shelter/ he would take 
his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the 
bottomless pit. I at least had no illusions; but it was I, 
too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of 


LORD JIM 


16T 


words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same way one 
dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold. It is 
when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need 
that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and 
misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the 
stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were 
a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of 
flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the 
outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, 
unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no 
hand can grasp. It was the fear of losing him that kept 
me silent, for it was borne upon me suddenly and with 
unaccountable force that should I let him slip away into 
the darkness I would never forgive myself. 

“‘Well. Thanks — once more You’ve been — er — un 
commonly — really there’s no word to . . . Uncommonly ! 
I don’t know why, I am sure. I am afraid I don’t feel as 
grateful as I would if the whole thing hadn’t been so bru¬ 
tally sprung on me. Because at bottom . . . you, your- 
■ self . .’ He stuttered. 

“ ‘ Possibly,’ I struck in. He frowned. 

“ ‘ All the same, one is responsible.’ He watched me like 
a hawk. 

“ ‘ And that’s true, too,’ I said. 

•“Well. I’ve gone with it to the end, and I don’t intend 
to let any man cast it in my teeth without — without — 
resenting it.’ He clenched his fist. 

“ ‘ There’s yourself,’ I said with a smile — mirthless 
enough, God knows — but he looked at me menacingly. 
* That’s my business,’ he said. An air of indomitable reso¬ 
lution came and went upon his face like a vain and passing 
shadow. Next moment he looked a dear good boy in 
trouble, as before. He flung away the cigarette. ‘ Good* 


168 


LORD JIM 


bye/ he said, with the sudden haste of a man who had lift 
gered too long in view of a pressing bit of work waiting for 
him; and then for a second or so he made not the slightest 
movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninter¬ 
rupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked, 
overwhelming fury that called to one’s mind the imageg 
of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined 
mountains. No man could breast the colossal and head, 
long stream that seemed to break and swirl against the 
dim stillness in which we were precariously sheltered as if 
on an island. The perforated pipe gurgled, choked, spat, 
and splashed in odious ridicule of a swimmer fighting for 
his life. ‘It is raining/ I remonstrated, ‘and I . . .* 
‘ Rain or shine/ he began brusquely, checked himself, and 
walked to the window. ‘Perfect deluge/ he muttered after 
a while: he leaned his forehead on the glass. ‘ It’s dark, 
too.’ 

“ ‘ Yes, it is very dark/ I said. 

“He pivoted on his heels, crossed the room, and had 
actually opened the door leading into the corridor before 
I leaped up from my chair. ‘Wait/ I cried, ‘I want you 
to . . .’ ‘I can’t dine with you again to-night/ he flung 
at me, with one leg out of the room already. ‘I haven’t 
the slightest intention to ask you/ I shouted. At this he 
drew back his foot, but remained mistrustfully in the very 
doorway. I lost no time in entreating him earnestly not 
to be absurd; to come in and shut the door.” 



LORD JIM 


100 


CHAPTER XVn 

*He came in at last; but I believe it was mostly the 
rain that did it; it was falling just then with a devastat¬ 
ing violence which quieted down gradually while we talked. 
His manner was very sober and set; his bearing was that 
of a naturally taciturn man possessed by an idea. My 
talk was of the material aspect of his position; it had the 
sole aim of saving him from the degradation, ruin, and 
despair that out there close so swiftly upon a friendless, 
homeless man; I pleaded with him to accept my help; 1 
argued reasonably: and every time I looked up at that 
absorbed smooth face, so grave and youthful, I had a dis¬ 
turbing sense of being no help, but rather an obstacle, to 
some mysterious, inexplicable, impalpable striving of his 
wounded spirit. 

“‘I suppose you intend to eat and drink and to sleep 
under shelter in the usual way/ I remember saying with 
irritation. ‘You say you won’t touch the money that is 
due to you. . . / He came as near as his sort can to 
making a gesture of horror. (There were three weeks and 
five days’ pay owing him as mate of the Patna.) ‘Well, 
that’s too little to matter anyhow; but what will you do 
to-morrow? Where will you turn? You must live . . / 
* That isn’t the thing,’ was the comment that escaped him 
under his breath. I ignored it, and went on combating 
what I assumed to be the scruples of an exaggerated deli¬ 
cacy. ‘On every conceivable ground/ I concluded, ‘you 
must let me help you.’ ‘ You can’t/ he said very simply 
and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I 
could detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, 
but which I despaired of ever approaching near enough 



170 


LOIiD JIM 


to fathom. I surveyed his well-proportioned bulk. ‘At 
any rate/ I said, ‘ I am able to help what I can see of you. 
I don’t pretend to do more;’ He shook his head sceptically 
without looking at me. I got very warm. ‘But I can/ 
I insisted. ‘I can do even more. I am doing more. I 
am trusting you . . .’ ‘The money . . he began. ‘Upon 
my word you deserve being told to go to the devil/ I cried, 
forcing the note of indignation. He was startled, smiled, 
and I pressed my attack home. ‘It isn’t a question of 
money at all. You are too superficial/ I said (and at the 
same time I was thinking to myself: Well, here goes ! And 
perhaps he is, after all). ‘ Look at the letter I want you to 
take. I am writing to a man of whom I’ve never asked a 
favour, and I am writing about you in terms that one only 
ventures to use when speaking of an intimate friend. I 
make myself unreservedly responsible for you. That’s 
what I am doing. And really if you will only reflect a lit¬ 
tle what that means . . .’ 

“ He lifted his head. The rain had passed away; only 
the water-pipe went on shedding tears with an absurd drip, 
drip outside the window. It was very quiet in the room, 
whose shadows huddled together in corners, away from thf 
still flame of the candle flaring upright in the shape of a 
dagger; his face after a while seemed suffused by a reflec¬ 
tion of a soft light as if the dawn had broken already. 

“ ‘ Jove ! ’ he gasped out. ‘ It is noble of you! ’ 

“ Had he suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, 
I could not have felt more humiliated. I thought to myself 
— serve me right for a sneaking humbug. . . . His eyes 
shone straight into my face, but I perceived it was not a 
mocking brightness. All at once he sprang into jerky agita¬ 
tion, like one of these flat wooden figures that are worked 
by a string. His arms went up, then came down with a 


LORD JIM 


171 


slap. He became another man altogether. ‘And I had 
never seen/ he shouted; then suddenly bit his lip and 
frowned. ‘ What a bally ass I’ve been/ he said very slow 
in an awed tone. . . . ‘ You are a brick/ he cried next, in 
a muffled voice. He snatched my hand as though he had 
just then seen it for the first time, and dropped it at once. 

‘ Why! this is what I — you — I . . / he stammered, and 
j then with a return of his old stolid, I may say mulish, 
manner, he began heavily, ‘ I would be a brute now if I . . .* 
and then his voice seemed to break. ‘ That’s all right/ > 
said. I was almost alarmed by this display of feeling, 

I through which pierced a strange elation. I had pulled the 
string accidentally, as it were; I did not fully understand 
the working of the toy. ‘1 must go now/ he said. ‘ Jove! 
Xou have helped me. Can’t sit still. The very thing . . / 
He looked at me with puzzled admiration. ‘The very 
thing . . .’ 

“ Of course it was the thing. It was ten to one that 1 
had saved him from starvation — of that peculiar sort that 
is almost invariably associated with drink. This was alL 
I had not a single illusion on that score, but looking at him,, 
I allowed myself to wonder at the nature of the one he had, 
within the last three minutes, so evidently taken unto his 
bosom. I had forced into his hand the means to carry on 
decently the serious business of life, to get food, drink, and. 
shelter of the customary kind, while his wounded spirit, like 
a bird with a broken wing, might hop and flutter into some 
hole, to die quietly of inanition there. This is what I had 
thrust upon him: a definitely small thing; and — behold! 
— by the manner of its reception it loomed in the dim light 
of the candle like a big, indistinct, perhaps a dangerous, 
shadow. ‘ You don’t mind me not saying anything appro¬ 
priate/ he burst out. ‘ There isn’t anything one could say 



172 


LORD JIM 


Last night already you have done me no end of good. Lis. 
tening to me — you know. I give you my word I’ve thought 
more than once the top of my head would fly off . . .’ He 
darted — positively darted — here and there, rammed his 
hands into his pockets, jerked them out again, flung his cap 
on his head. I had no idea it was in him to be so airily 
brisk. I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an eddy of 
wind, while a mysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite 
doubt, weighed me down in my chair. He stood stock-still, 
as if struck motionless by a discovery. ‘You have given 
me confidence,’ he declared soberly. ‘ Oh! for God’s sake, 
my dear fellow — don’t! ’ I entreated, as though he had 
hurt me. ‘ All right. I’ll shut up now and henceforth. 
Can’t prevent me thinking, though. . . . Never mind! . 

I’ll show yet . . .’ He went to the door in a hurry, paused 
with his head down, and came back, stepping deliberately. 
‘ I always thought that if a fellow could begin with a clean 
slate . . . And now you ... in a measure . . . yes . . . 
clean slate.’ I waved my hand, and he marched out with' 
out looking back; the sound of his footfalls died out gradu¬ 
ally behind the closed door — the unhesitating tread of a 
man walking in broad daylight. 

“ But as to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I 
remained strangely unenlightened. I was no longer young 
enough to behold at every turn the magnificence that besets 
our insignificant footsteps in good and in evil. I smiled to 
think that, after all, it was yet he, of us two, who had 
the light. And I felt sad. A clean slate — did he say ? 
As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven 
in imperishable characters upon the face of a rock.” 


LORD JIM 


173 


CHAPTER XVIII 

“ Six months afterwards my friend (he was a cynical, 
more than middle-aged bachelor, with a reputation for ec¬ 
centricity, and owned a rice-mill) wrote to me, and judging 
from the warmth of my recommendation, that I would like 
to hear, enlarged a little upon Jim’s perfections. These 
were apparently of a quiet and effective sort. ‘Not having 
been able so far to find more in my heart than a resigned 
toleration for any individual of my kind, I have lived till 
now alone in a house that even in this steaming climate 
could be considered as too big for one man. I have had him 
to live with me for some time past. It seems I haven’t 
made a mistake.’ It seemed to me on reading this letter 
that my friend had found in his heart more than tolerance 
for Jim, — that there were the beginnings of active liking. 
Of course he stated his grounds in a characteristic way 
For one thing, Jim kept his freshness in the climate. Had 
he been a girl — my friend wrote — one could have said he 
was blooming — blooming modestly — like a violet, not like 
some of these blatant tropical flowers. He had been in the 
house for six weeks, and had not as yet attempted to slap 
him on the back, or address him as ‘ old boy,’ or try to make 
him feel a superannuated fossil. He had nothing of the 
exasperating young man’s chatter. He was good-tempered, 
had not much to say for himself, was not clever by any 
means, thank goodness — wrote my friend. It appeared, 
however, that Jim was clever enough to be quietly apprecia^ 
tive of his wit; while, on the other hand, he amused him by 
his nai'veness. ‘ The dew is yet on him, and since I had 
the bright idea of giving him a room in the house and hav¬ 
ing him at meals I feel less withered myself. The other 





174 


LORD JIM 


day he took it into his head to cross the room with no other 
purpose but to open a door for me; and I felt more in touch 
with mankind than I had been for years. Ridiculous, isn’t 
it ? Of course I guess there is something — some awful 
little scrape — which you know all about — but if I am sure 
that it is terribly heinous, I fancy one could manage to for¬ 
give it. For my part, I declare I am unable to imagine him 
guilty of anything much worse than robbing an orchard. Is 
it much worse ? Perhaps you ought to have told me ; but 
it is such a long time since we both turned saints that you 
may have forgotten we too had sinned in our time ? It may 
be that some day I shall have to ask you, and then I shall 
expect to be told. I don’t care to question him myself till 
I have some idea what it is. Moreover, it’s too soon as yet. 
Let him open the door a few times more for me. . . .’ Thus 
my friend. I was trebly pleased— at Jim’s shaping so well, 
at the tone of the letter, at my own cleverness. Evidently I 
had known what I was doing. I had read characters aright, 
and so on. And what if something unexpected and wonder¬ 
ful were to come of it ? That evening, reposing in a deck¬ 
chair under the shade of my own poop-awning (it was in 
Hong-Kong harbour), I laid on Jim’s behalf the first stone 
of a castle in Spain. 

“ I made a trip to the northward, and when I returned I 
found another letter from my friend waiting for me. It was 
the first envelope I tore open. ‘ There are no spoons miss¬ 
ing, as far as I know,’ ran the first line; ‘ I haven’t been 
interested enough to inquire. He is gone, leaving on the 
breakfast-table a formal little note of apology, which is 
either silly or heartless. Probably both — and it’s all one 
to me. Allow me to say, lest you should have some more 
mysterious young men in reserve, that I have shut up shop, 
definitely and forever. This is the last eccentricity I shall 



LORD JIM 


ITS 

be guilty of. Do not imagine for a moment that I care a 
hang; but he is very much regretted at tennis-parties, and 
for my own sake I’ve told a plausible lie at the club. . . . ’ 
I flung the letter aside and started looking through the 
batch on my table, till I came upon Jim’s handwriting. 
Would you believe it ? One chance in a hundred! But 
it is always that hundredth chance! That little second 
engineer of the Patna had turned up in a more or less des¬ 
titute state and got a temporary job of looking after the 
machinery of the mill. ‘1 couldn’t stand the familiarity 
of the little beast,’ Jim wrote from a seaport seven hun¬ 
dred miles south of the place where he should have been 
in clover. ‘ I am now for the time with Egstrom & Blake, 
ship-chandlers, as their — well — runner, to call the thing by 
its right name. For reference I gave them your name, which 
they know of course, and if you could write a word in my 
favour it would be a permanent employment.’ I was utterly 
crushed under the ruins of my castle, but of course I wrote 
as desired. Before the end of the year my new charter 
took me that way, and I had an opportunity of seeing him. 

“ He was still with Egstrom & Blake, and we met in what 
they called ‘ our parlour,’ opening out of the store. He had 
that moment come in from boarding a ship, and confronted 
me, head down, ready for a tussle. ‘What have you got to 
say for yourself ? ’ I began as soon as we had shaken hands. 
‘What I wrote you — nothing more,’ he said stubbornly. 
‘Did the fellow blab—or what?’ I asked. He looked up 
-— at me with a troubled smile. ‘ Oh, no! He didn’t. He 
made it a kind of confidential business between us. 
He was most damnably mysterious whenever I came over to 
the mill; he would wink at me in a respectful manner — as 
much as to say, We know what we know. Infernally fawn¬ 
ing and familiar — and that sort of thing . . .’ He threw 


176 


LORD JIM 


himself into a chair and stared down his legs. ‘One day 
we happened to be alone and the fellow had the cheek to 
say, “ Well, Mr. James ” — I was called Mr. James there as 
if I had been the son — “ here we are together once more. 
This is better than the old ship — ain’t it?” . . . Wasn’t it 
appalling, eh ? I looked at him, and he put on a knowing 
air. “ Don’t you be uneasy, sir,” he says. “ I know a 
gentleman when I see one, and I know how a gentleman 
feels. I hope, though, you will be keeping me on this job. 
1 had a hard time of it too, along of that rotten old Patna 
racket.” Jove! It was awful. I don’t know what i 
should have said or done if I had not just then heard Mr. 
Denver calling me in the passage. It was tiffin-time, and 
we walked together across the yard and through the garden 
to the bungalow. He began to chaff me in his kindly way 
... I believe he liked me ...’ 

“Jim was silent for a while. 

“ ‘ I know he liked me. That’s what made it so hard 
Such a splendid man! . . . That morning he slipped his 
hand under my arm. . . . He, too, was familiar with me? 
He burst into a short laugh, and dropped his chin on hi« 
breast. ‘ Pah! When I remembered how that mean little 
beast had been talking to me,’ he began suddenly in a 
vibrating voice, ‘ I couldn’t bear to think of myself ... I 
suppose you know . . . ’ I nodded. . . . ‘ More like a 
father,’ he cried; his voice sank. ‘ I would have had to tell 
him. I couldn’t let it go on — could I?’ ‘Well?’ I 
murmured, after waiting a while. ‘ I preferred to go,’ he 
said slowly; ‘ this thing must be buried.’ 

“We could hear in the shop Blake upbraiding Egstrom 
in an abusive, strained voice. They had been associated for 
many years, and every day from the moment the doors were 
opened to the last minute before closing, Blake, a little man 


LORD JIM 


177 


with sleek, jetty hair and unhappy, beady eyes, could be 
heard rowing his partner incessantly with a sort of scath¬ 
ing and plaintive fury. The sound of that everlasting 
scolding was part of the place like the other fixtures; even 
strangers would very soon come to disregard it completely 
unless it be perhaps to mutter ‘Nuisance/ or to get up sud¬ 
denly and shut the door of the ‘ parlour.’ Egstrom himself, 
a raw-boned, heavy Scandinavian, with a busy manner and 
immense blonde whiskers, went on directing his people, 
checking parcels, making out bills or writing letters at a 
stand-up desk in the shop, and comported himself in that 
clatter exactly as though he had been stone-deaf. Now and 
again he would emit a bothered perfunctory ‘ Sssh/ which 
neither produced, nor was expected to produce, the slightest 
effect. ‘ They are very decent to me here/ said Jim. ‘ Blake’s 
a little cad, but Egstrom’s all right.’ He stood up quickly, 
and walking with measured steps to a tripod telescope 
standing in the window and pointed at the roadstead, he 
applied his eye to it. ‘ There’s that ship which had been 
becalmed outside all the morning has got a breeze now and 
is coming in/ he remarked patiently; ‘I must go and 
board.’ We shook hands in silence, and he turned to go. 
‘Jim!’ I cried. He looked round with his hand on the 
lock. ‘ You — you have thrown away something like a for¬ 
tune.’ He came back to me all the way from the door. 
‘ Such a splendid old chap/ he said. 1 How could I ? How 
could I?’ His lips twitched. ‘Here it does not matter.’ 
‘ Oh ! you — you — ’ I began, and had to cast about for a 
suitable word, but before I became aware that there was no 
name that would just do, he was gone. I heard outside 
Egstrom’s deep gentle voice saying cheerily, ‘That’s the 
Sarah W. Granger , Jimmy. You must manage to be first 
aboard; 9 and directly Blake struck in, screaming after the 


178 


LORD JIM 


manner of an outraged cockatoo, ‘Tell the captain we’v« 
got some of his mail here. That’ll fetch him. D’ye heau 
Mister What’s-your-name ? ’ And there was Jim answer¬ 
ing Egstrom with something boyish in his tone. ‘ All right 
I’ll make a race of it.’ He seemed to take refuge in the 
boat-sailing part of that sorry business. 

“I did not see him again that trip, but on my next (I 
had a six months’ charter) I went up to the store. Ten 
yards away from the door Blake’s scolding met my 
ears, and when I came in he gave me a glance of utter 
wretchedness; Egstrom, all smiles, advanced, extending 
a large bony hand. ‘Glad to see you, captain. . . . Sssh. 
. . . Been thinking you were about due back here. 
What did you say, sir ? . . . Sssh. ... Oh! him! He 
has left us. Come into the parlour.’ . . . After the slam 
of the door Blake’s strained voice became faint, as the 
voice of one scolding desperately in a wilderness. . . . ‘Put 
us to a great inconvenience, too. Used us badly—I must 
say . . . ’ ‘ Where’s he gone to ? Do you know ? ’ I asked. 
‘No. It’s no use asking either,’ said Egstrom, standing 
bewhiskered and obliging before me with his arms hang¬ 
ing down his sides clumsily, and a thin silver watch-chain 
looped very low on a rucked-up blue serge waistcoat. ‘A 
man like that don’t go anywhere in particular.’ I was 
too concerned at the news to ask for the explanation of 
that pronouncement, and he went on. ‘He left — let’s 
see — the very day a steamer with returning pilgrims 
from the Bed Sea put in here with two blades of her 
propeller gone. Three weeks ago now.’ ‘Wasn’t there 
something said about the Patna case ? ’ I asked, fearing 
the worst. He gave a start and looked at me as if I had 
been a sorcerer. ‘ Why, yes! How do you know ? Some 
of them were talking about it here. There was a captain 


LORD JIM 


179 


or two, the manager of Yanlo’s engineering shop at the 
harbour, two or three others, and myself. Jim was in 
here too, having a sandwich and a glass of beer; when 
we are busy—you see, captain—there’s no time for a 
proper tiffin. He was standing by this table eating sand¬ 
wiches, and the rest of us were round the telescope watch¬ 
ing that steamer come in; and by and by Yanlo’s manager 
began to talk about the chief of the Patna; he had done 
some repairs for him once, and from that he went on to 
tell us what an old ruin she was, and the money that 
had been made out of her. He came to mention her last 
voyage, and then we all struck in. Some said one thing, 
and some another — not much—what you or any othei 
man might say; and there was some laughing. Captain 
O’Brien of the Sarah W. Granger , a large, noisy, old man 
with a stick — he was sitting listening to us in this arm¬ 
chair here — he let drive suddenly with his stick at the 
floor, and roars out, “ Skunks! ” . . . Made us all jump. 
Yanlo’s manager winks at us and asks, “ What’s the mat¬ 
ter, Captain O’Brien ? ” “ Matter! matter! ” the old man 

began to shout; “what are you Injuns laughing at? It’s 
no laughing matter. It’s a disgrace to human natur’ — 
that’s what it is. I would despise being seen in the 
same room with one of those men. Yes, sir! ” He seemed 
to catch my eye like, and I had to speak out of civility. 
“ Skunks!” says I, “of course, Captain O’Brien, and I 
wouldn’t care to have them here myself, so you’re quite 
safe in this room, Captain O’Brien. Have a little some¬ 
thing cool to drink.” “ Dam’ your drink, Egstrom, ” says 
he, with a twinkle in his eye; “when I want a drink 
I will shout for it. I am going to quit. It stinks here 
now.” At this all the others burst out laughing, and 
out they go after the old man. And then, sir, that blasted 


180 


LORD JIM 


Jim he puts down the sandwich he had in his hand anti 
walks around the table to me; there was his glass of 
beer poured out quite full. “I am off,” he says—just 
like this. “It isn’t half-past one yet,” says I; “you 
might snatch a smoke first.” I thought he meant it was 
time for him to go down to his work. When I under¬ 
stood what he was up to, my arms fell — so! Can’t get 
a man like that every day, you know, sir; a regular 
devil for sailing a boat; ready to go out miles to sea to 
meet ships in any sort of weather. More than once a 
captain would come in here full of it, and the first thing 
he would say would be, “That’s a reckless sort of a 
lunatic you’ve got for a water-clerk, Egstrom. I was 
feeling my way in at daylight under short canvas when 
there comes flying out of the mist right under my fore¬ 
foot a boat half under water, sprays going over the mast¬ 
head, two frightened niggers on the bottom boards, a 
yelling fiend at the tiller. Hey ! hey ! Ship ahoy! ahoy! 
Captain! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake’s man first to 
speak to you! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake! Hallo! 
hey! whoop! Kick the niggers — out reefs — a squall — 
on at the time — shoots ahead whooping and yelling to me 
to make sail and he would give me a lead in—more like 
a demon than a man. Never saw a boat handled lik* 
that in all my life. Couldn’t have been drunk — was 
he? Such a quiet, soft-spoken chap too — blush like a 
girl when he came on board. ...” I tell you, Captain 
Marlow, nobody had a chance against us with a strange 
ship when Jim was out. The other ship-chandlers just 
kept their old customers, and . .’ 

“ Egstrom appeared overcome with emotion. 

“‘Why, sir —it seemed as though he wouldn’t mind 
going a hundred miles out to sea in an old shoe to nab a 



XOKD JIM 


181 


ship for the firm. If the business had been his own and 
all to make yet, he couldn’t have done more in that way 
And now . . all at once . . . like this! Thinks I to 
myself: “Oho! a rise in the screw — that’s the trouble — 
is it ? All right,” says I, “ no need of all that fuss with 
me, Jimmy. Just mention your figure. Anything in 
reason.” He looks at me as if he wanted to swallow some¬ 
thing that stuck in his throat. “ I can’t stop with you.” 
“What’s that blooming joke?” I asks. He shakes his 
head, and I could see in his eye he was as good as gone 
already, sir. So I turned-to him and slanged him till all 
was blue. “ What is it you’re running away from ? ” I 
asks. “ Who has been getting at you ? What scared 
you ? You haven’t as much sense as a rat; they don’t clear 
out from a good ship. Where do you expect to get a better 
berth?—you this and you that.” I made him look sick, 
I can tell you. “ This business ain’t going to sink,” says I. 
He gave a big jump. “ Good-bye,” he says, nodding at me 
like a lord ; “ you ain’t half a bad chap, Egstrom. I give 
you my word that if you knew my reasons you wouldn’t 
care to keep me.” “ That’s the biggest lie you ever told 
in your life,” says I; “ I know my own mind.” He made 
me so mad that I had to laugh. “ Can’t you really stop 
long enough to drink this glass of beer here, you funny 
beggar, you ? ” I don’t know what came over him; he 
didn’t seem able to find the door; something comical, I 
can tell you, captain. I drank the beer myself. “ Well, if 
you’re in such a hurry, here’s luck to you in your own 
drink,” says I; “ only, you mark my words, if you keep 
up this game you’ll very soon find that the earth ain’t 
big enough to hold you — that’s all.” He gave me one 
black look, and out he rushed with a face fit to scare 
little children/ 


182 


LORD JIM 


“ Egstrom snorted bitterly, and combed one auburn 
whisker with knotty fingers. 1 Haven’t been able to get a 
man that was any good since. It’s nothing but worry, 
worry, worry in business. And where might you have come 
across him, captain, if it’s fair to ask ? ’ 

“ 1 He was the mate of the Patna that voyage,’ I said, 
feeling that I owed some explanation. For a time Egstrom 
remained very still, with his fingers plunged in his hair at 
the side of his face, and then exploded. 1 And who the 
devil cares about that ? ’ ‘ I daresay no one,’ I began. . . . 

* And what the devil is he — anyhow — for to go on like 
this ? ’ He stuffed suddenly his left whisker into his 
mouth and stood amazed. ‘ Jee ! ’ he exclaimed, ‘ I told 
him the earth wouldn’t be big enough to hold his caper.’ ” 


CHAPTER XIX 

“ I have told you these two episodes at length to show 
his manner of dealing with himself under the new condi¬ 
tions of his life. There were many others of the sort, 
more than I could count on the fingers of my two hands. 
They were all equally tinged by a high-minded absurdity 
of intention which made their futility profound and touch¬ 
ing. To fling away your daily bread so as to get your 
hands free for a grapple with a ghost may be an act of 
orosaic heroism. Men had done it before (though we who 
have lived know full well that it is not the haunted soul 
but the hungry body that makes an outcast), and men who 
had eaten and meant to eat every day had applauded the 
creditable folly. He was indeed unfortunate, for all his 
recklessness could not carry him out from under the 
shadow. There was always a doubt of his courage. The 
truth seems to be that it is impossible to lay the ghost of 



LORD JIM 


183 


a fact. You can face it or shirk it — and I have come 
across a man or two who could wink at their familiar 
shades. Obviously Jim was not of the winking sort; but 
what I could never make up my mind about was whether 
his line of conduct amounted to shirking his ghost or to 
facing him out. 

“I strained my mental eyesight only to discover that, 
as with the complexion of ail our actions, the shade of 
difference was so delicate that it was impossible to say. It 
might have been flight and it might have been a mode of 
combat. To the common mind he became known as a 
rolling stone, because this was the funniest part: he did 
after a time become perfectly known, and even notorious, 
within the circle of his wanderings (which had a diameter 
of, say, three thousand miles), in the same way as an eccen¬ 
tric character is known to a whole countryside. For in¬ 
stance, in Bankok, where he found employment with 
Fucker Brothers, charterers and teak merchants, it was 
almost pathetic to see him go about in sunshine hugging 
his secret, which was known to the very up-country logs 
on the river. Schomberg, the keeper of the hotel where he 
boarded, a hirsute Alsatian of manly bearing and an irre¬ 
pressible retailer of all the scandalous gossip of the place, 
would, with both elbows on the table, impart an adorned 
version of the story to any guest who cared to imbibe 
knowledge along with the more costly liquors. ‘And, 
mind you, the nicest fellow you could meet/ would be his 
generous conclusion; ‘quite superior.’ It says a lot for 
the casual crowd that frequented Schomberg’^ establish¬ 
ment that Jim managed to hang out in Bankok for a whole 
six months. I remarked that people, perfect strangers, 
took to him as one takes to a nice child. His manner 
was reserved, but it was as though his personal appear- 




184 


LORD JIM 


ance, his hair, his eyes, his smile, made friends for him 
wherever he went. And, of course, he was no fool. I 
heard Siegmund Yucker (native of Switzerland), a gentle 
creature ravaged by a cruel dyspepsia, and so frightfully 
lame that his head swung through a quarter of a circle at 
every step he took, declare appreciatively that for one so 
young he was ‘ of great gabasidy,’ as though it had been a 
mere question of cubic contents. ‘ Why not send him up 
country ? 9 I suggested anxiously. (Yucker Brothers had 
concessions and teak forests in the interior.) ‘If he has 
capacity, as you say, he will soon get hold of the work. 
And physically he is very fit. His health is always ex¬ 
cellent/ ‘ Ach! It’s a great ting in dis goundry to be 
vree vrom tispep-shia,’ sighed poor Yucker enviously, cast¬ 
ing a stealthy glance at the pit of his ruined stomach. I 
left him drumming pensively on his desk and muttering, 
‘ Es ist ein idee. Es ist ein idee.’ Unfortunately, that very 
evening an unpleasant affair took place in the hotel. 

“ I don’t know that I blame Jim very much, but it was a 
truly regrettable incident. It belonged to the lamentable 
species of bar-room scuffles, and the other party to it was a 
cross-eyed Dane of sorts whose visiting-card recited under 
his misbegotten name : first lieutenant in the Royal Sia 
inese Navy. The fellow of course was utterly hopeless at 
billiards, but did not like to be beaten, I suppose. He had 
had enough to drink to turn nasty after the sixth game, 
and make some scornful remark at Jim’s expense. Most of 
the people there didn’t hear what was said, and those who 
had heard seemed to have had all precise recollection 
scared out of them by the appalling nature of the conse¬ 
quences that immediately ensued. It was very lucky for 
the Dane that he could swim, because the room opened on 
a verandah and the Menam flowed below very wide and 



LORD JIM 


185 


black. A boat-load of Chinamen, bound, as likely as not, 
on some thieving expedition, fished out the officer of the 
King of Siam, and Jim turned up at about midnight on 
board my ship without a hat. ‘Everybody in the room 
seemed to know/ he said, gasping yet from the contest, as 
it were. He was rather sorry, on general principles, for 
what had happened, though in this case there had been, he 
said, ‘no option.’ But what dismayed him was to find the 
nature of his burden as well known to everybody as though 
he had gone about all that time carrying it on his shoul¬ 
ders. Naturally after this he couldn’t remain in the place. 
He was universally condemned for the brutal violence, so 
unbecoming a man in his delicate position; some main¬ 
tained he had been disgracefully drunk at the time; others 
criticised his want of tact. Even Schomberg was very 
much annoyed. ‘ He is a very nice young man,’ he said 
argumentatively to me, ‘but the lieutenant is a first-rate 
fellow too. He dines every night at my table d’hdte, you 
know. And there’s a billiard-cue broken. I can’t allow 
that. Eirst thing this morning I went over with my apolo¬ 
gies to the lieutenant, and I think I’ve made it all right for 
myself; but only think, captain, if everybody started such 
games! Why, the man might have been drowned! And 
here I can’t run out into the next street and buy a new cue. 
I’ve got to write to Europe for them. No, no! A temper 
like that won’t do! ’ . . . He was extremely sore on the 
subject. 

“ This was the worst incident of all in his — his retreat. 
Nobody could deplore it more than myself; for if, as some¬ 
body said hearing him mentioned, ‘ Oh yes ! I know. He 
has knocked about a good deal out here,’ yet he had some¬ 
how avoided being battered and chipped in the process. 
This last affair, however, made me seriously uneasv because 




186 


LORD JIM 


if his exquisite sensibilities were to go the length of involve 
ing him in pot-house shindies, he would lose his name of an 
inoffensive, if aggravating, fool, and acquire that of a com 
mon loafer. For all my confidence in him I could not help 
reflecting that in such cases from the name to the thing 
itself is but a step. I suppose you will understand that by 
that time I could not think of washing my hands of him. 

I took him away from Bankok in my ship, and we had a 
longish passage. It was pitiful to see how he shrank 
within himself. A seaman, even if a mere passenger, takes 
an interest in a ship, and looks at the sea-life around him 
with the critical enjoyment of a painter, for instance, look¬ 
ing at another man’s work. In every sense of the expres¬ 
sion he is ‘ on deck 9 ; but my Jim, for the most part, 
skulked down below as though he had been a stowaway. 
He infected me so that I avoided speaking on professional 
matters, such as would suggest themselves naturally to two 
sailors during a passage. For whole days we did not ex¬ 
change a word; I felt extremely unwilling to give orders 
to my officers in his presence. Often, when alone with him 
on deck or in the cabin, we didn’t know what to do with 
our eyes. 

“ I placed him with De Jongh, as you know, glad enough ' 
to dispose of him in any way, yet persuaded that his posi¬ 
tion was now growing intolerable. He had lost some of 
that elasticity which had enabled him to rebound back into 
his uncompromising position after every overthrow. One 
day, coming ashore, I saw him standing on the quay; the 
water of the roadstead and the sea in the offing made one 
smooth ascending plane, and the outermost ships at anchoi 
seemed to ride motionless in the sky. He was waiting for 
his boat, which was being loaded at our feet with pack¬ 
ages of small stores for some vessel ready to leave. Aftei 


LORD JIM 


187 


exchanging greetings, we remained silent — side by side 
‘Jove!’ he said suddenly, ‘this is killing work/ 

w He smiled at me; I must say he generally could man¬ 
age a smile. I made no reply. I knew very well he was 
not alluding to his duties; he had an easy time of it wit! 
De Jongh. Nevertheless, as soon as he had spoken I 
became completely convinced that the work was killing. 
I did not even look at him. ‘Would you like/ said I, ‘to 
leave this part of the world altogether; try California or 
the West Coast? I’ll see what I can do . . / He inter¬ 
rupted me a little scornfully. ‘What difference would it 
make? . . / I felt at once convinced that he was right. 
It would make no difference; it was not relief he wanted; 
I seemed to perceive dimly that what he wanted, what he 
was, as it were, waiting for, was something not easy to 
define — something in the nature of an opportunity. I had 
given him many opportunities, but they had been merely 
opportunities to earn his bread. Yet what more could any 
man do ? The position struck me as hopeless, and poor 
Brierly’s saying recurred to me, ‘Let him creep twenty 
feet underground and stay there/ Better that, I thought, 
than this waiting above ground for the impossible. Yet 
one could not be sure even of that. There and then, before 
his boat was three oars’ lengths away from the quay, I had 
made up my mind to go and consult Stein in the evening. 

“ This Stein was a wealthy and respected merchant. 
His ‘ house ’ (because it was a house, Stein & Co., and there 
was some sort of partner who, as Stein said, ‘ looked after 
the Moluccas ’) had a large inter-island business, with a lot 
of trading posts established in the most out-of-the-way 
places for collecting the produce. His wealth and his re¬ 
spectability were not exactly the reasons why I was anxious 
to 6eek his advice, I desired to confide my difficulty 


188 


LORD JIM 


to him because he was one of the most trustworthy 
men I had ever known. The gentle light of a simple, 
unwearied, as it were, and intelligent good-nature illumined 
his long hairless face. It had deep downward folds, and 
was pale as of a man who had always led a sedentary life 
— which was indeed very far from being the case. His 
hair was thin, and brushed back from a massive and lofty 
forehead. One fancied that at twenty he must have looked 
very much like he was now at threescore. It was a 
student’s face; only the eyebrows nearly all white, thick 
and bushy, together with the resolute searching glance that 
came from under them, were not in accord with his, I may 
say, learned appearance. He was tall and loose-jointed; 
his slight stoop, together with an innocent smile, made him 
appear benevolently ready to lend you his ear; his long 
arms with pale big hands had rare deliberate gestures of 
a pointing out, demonstrating kind. I speak of him at 
length, because under this exterior, and in conjunction with 
an upright and indulgent nature, this man possessed an 
intrepidity of spirit and a physical courage that could have 
been called reckless had it not been like a natural function 
of the body — say good digestion, for instance — completely 
unconscious of itself. It is sometimes said of a man that 
he carries his life in his hand. Such a saying would have 
been inadequate if applied to him; during the early part 
of his existence in the East he had been playing ball with 
it. All this was in the past, but I knew the story of his 
life and the origin of his fortune. He was also a naturalist 
of some distinction, or perhaps I should say a learned col¬ 
lector. Entomology was his special study. His collection of 
Buprestidce and Longicorns — beetles all — horrible minia. 
ture monsters, looking malevolent in death and immobility, 
and this cabinet of butterflies, beautiful., and hovering 


LORD JIM 


180 


under the glass of eases on lifeless wings, had spread his 
fame far over the earth. The name of this merchant, 
adventurer, sometime adviser of a Malay sultan (to whom 
he never alluded otherwise than as ‘ my poor Mohammed 
Bonso’), had, on account of a few bushels of dead insects, 
become known to learned persons in Europe, who could 
have had no conception, and certainly would not have 
cared to know anything, of his life and character. I, who 
knew, considered him an eminently suitable person to receive 
my confidences about Jim’s difficulties as well as my own.” 


CHAPTER XX 

“ Late in the evening I entered his study, after travers¬ 
ing an imposing but empty dining-room very dimly lit. 
The house was silent. I was preceded by an elderly grim 
Javanese servant in a sort of livery of white jacket and 
yellow sarong, who, after throwing the door open, exclaimed 
low, ‘ 0 master ! 9 and stepping aside, vanished in a mys¬ 
terious way as though he had been a ghost only momen¬ 
tarily embodied for that particular service. Stein turned 
round with the chair, and in the same movement his spec¬ 
tacles seemed to get pushed up on his forehead. He 
welcomed me in his quiet and humorous voice. Only one 
comer of the vast room, the corner in which stood his 
writing-desk, was strongly lighted by a shaded reading- 
lamp, and the rest of the spacious apartment melted into 
shapeless gloom like a cavern. Narrow shelves filled with 
dark boxes of uniform shape and colour ran round the 
walls, not from floor to ceiling, but in a sombre belt about 
four feet broad. Catacombs of beetles. Wooden tablets 
r r 2 re hung above at irregular intervals. The light reached 



190 


LORD JIM 


one of them, and the word Coleoptera written in gold letter! 
glittered mysteriously upon a vast dimness. The glass 
cases containing the collection of butterflies were ranged in 
three long rows upon slender-legged little tables. One of 
these cases had been removed from its place and stood on 
the desk, which was bestrewn with oblong slips of paper 
blackened with minute handwriting. 

" 1 So you see me — so,’ he said. His hand hovered over 
the case where a butterfly in solitary grandeur spread out 
dark bronze wings, seven inches or more across, with ex¬ 
quisite white veinings and a gorgeous border of yellow 
spots. ‘ Only one specimen like this they have in your 
London, and then — no more. To my small native town 
this, my collection, I shall bequeath. Something of me. 
The best.’ 

“He bent forward in the chair and gazed intently, his 
chin over the front of the case. I stood at his back. ( Mar¬ 
vellous/ he whispered, and seemed to forget my presence. 
His history was curious. He had been born in Bavaria, 
and when a youth of twenty-two had taken an active part 
in the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily compro¬ 
mised, he managed to make his escape, and at first found 
a refuge with a poor republican watchmaker in Trieste. 
From there he made his way to Tripoli with a stock of 
cheap watches to hawk about, — not a very great opening 
truly, but it turned out lucky enough, because it was there 
he came upon a Dutch traveller — a rather famous man, I 
believe, but I don’t remember his name. It was that natu¬ 
ralist who, engaging him as a sort of assistant, took him to 
the East. They travelled in the Archipelago together and 
separately, collecting insects and birds, for four years oi 
more. Then the naturalist went home, and Stein, having 
Qo home to go to, remained with an old trader he had come 


LORD JIM 


191 


across in his journeys in the interior of Celebes — if Celebes 
may be said to have an interior. This old Scotsman, the 
only white man allowed to reside in the country at the time, 
was a privileged friend of the chief ruler of Wajo States, 
who was a woman. I often heard Stein relate how that 
chap, who was slightly paralysed on one side, had intro¬ 
duced him to the native court a short time before auother 
stroke carried him off. He was a heavy man with a patri¬ 
archal white beard, and of imposing stature. He came into 
the council-hall where all the rajahs, pangerans, and head¬ 
men were assembled, with the queen, a fat, wrinkled woman 
(very free in her speech, Stein said), reclining on a high 
couch under a canopy. He dragged his leg, thumping with 
his stick, and grasped Stein’s arm, leading him right up to 
the couch. ‘Look, queen, and you rajahs, this is my son/ 
he proclaimed in a stentorian voice. ‘I have traded with 
your fathers, and when I die he shall trade with you and 
your sons.’ 

" By means of this simple formality Stein inherited the 
Scotsman’s privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, 
together with a fortified house on the banks of the only 
navigable river in the country. Shortly afterwards the old 
queen, who was so free in her speech, died, and the coun¬ 
try became disturbed by various pretenders to the throne. 
Stein joined the party of a younger son, the one of whom 
thirty years later he never spoke otherwise but as ‘ my poor 
Mohammed Bonso.’ They both became the heroes of in¬ 
numerable exploits; they had wonderful adventures, and 
once stood a siege in the Scotsman’s house for a month, with 
only a score of followers against a whole army. I believe 
the natives talk of that war to this day. Meantime, it 
seems, Stein never failed to annex on his own account every 
butterfly or beetle he could lay hands on. After some eight 



192 


LORD JIM 


years of war, negotiations, false truces, sudden outbreaks, 
reconciliation, treachery, and so on, and just as peace seemed 
at last permanently established, his ‘poor Mohammed 
Bonso ’ was assassinated at the gate of his own royal resi¬ 
dence while dismounting in the highest spirits on his return 
from a successful deer-hunt. This event rendered Stein’s 
position extremely insecure, but he would have stayed per¬ 
haps had it not been that a short time afterwards he lost 
Mohammed’s sister (‘ my dear wife the princess,’ he used to 
say solemnly), by whom he had had a daughter — mother 
and child both dying within three days of each other from 
some infectious fever. He left the country, which this cruel 
loss had made unbearable to him. Thus ended the first and 
adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so 
different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained 
with him, this strange past must have resembled a dream. He 
had a little money; he started life afresh, and in the course 
of years acquired a considerable fortune. At first he had 
travelled a good deal amongst the islands, but age had stolen 
upon him, and of late he seldom left his spacious house 
three miles out of town, with an extensive garden, and sur¬ 
rounded by stables, offices ,and bamboo cottages for his ser¬ 
vants and dependants, of whom he had many. He drove 
in his buggy every morning to town, where he had an office 
with white and Chinese clerks. He owned a small fleet 
of schooners and native craft, and dealt in island produce 
on a large scale. For the rest he lived solitary, but not 
misanthropic, with his books and his collection, classing 
and arranging specimens, corresponding with entomologists 
in Europe, writing up a descriptive catalogue of his treas¬ 
ures. Such was the history of the man whom I had come 
to consult upon Jim’s case without any definite hope. 
Simply to hear what he would have to say would have been a 


LORD JIM 


193 


relief. I was very anxious, but I respected the intense, almost 
passionate, absorption with which he looked at a butterfly, as 
though on the bronze sheen of these frail wings, in the white 
tracings, in the gorgeous markings, he could see other things, 
an image of something as perishable and defying destruction 
as these delicate and lifeless tissues displaying a splendour 
unmarred by death. 

“ ‘ Marvellous 1 ’ he repeated, looking up at me. * Look ! 
The beauty — but that is nothing—look at the accuracy, 
the harmony. And so fragile 1 And so strong! And so 
exact! This is Nature — the balance of colossal forces. 
Every star is so—and every blade of grass stands so — and 
the mighty Kosmos in perfect equilibrium produces—this. 
This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature — the great artist/ 
“‘Never heard an entomologist go on like this/ I ob¬ 
served cheerfully. ‘ Masterpiece! And what of man ? 9 
“ 6 Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece/ he said, 
keeping his eyes fixed on the glass case. * Perhaps the artist 
was a little mad. Eh ? What do you think ? Sometimes 
it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, 
where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he 
want all the place ? Why should he run about here and 
there making a great noise about himself, talking about the 
stars, disturbing the blades of grass ? . . / 

“ i Catching butterflies/ I chimed in. 

“He smiled, threw himself back in his chair, and 
stretched his legs. ‘ Sit down/ he said. ‘ I captured this 
rare specimen myself one very fine morning. And I had a 
very big emotion. You don’t know what it is for a collector 
to capture such a rare specimen. You can’t know/ 

“ I smiled at my ease in a rocking-chair. His eyes seemed 
to look far beyond the wall at which they stared; and he 
narrated how, one night, a messenger arrived from his 6 poor 



194 


LORD JIM 


Mohammed/ requiring his presence at the ‘residenz’—as 
he called it — which was distant some nine or ten miles by 
a bridle-path over a cultivated plain, with patches of forest 
here and there. Early in the morning he started from his 
fortified house, after embracing his little Emma, and leaving 
the 1 princess/ his wife, in command. He described how 
she came with him as far as the gate, walking with one 
hand on the neck of his horse; she had on a white jacket, 
gold pins in her hair, and a brown leather belt over her left 
shoulder with a revolver in it. 1 She talked as women will 
talk/ he said, ‘ telling me to be careful, and to try to get 
back before dark, and what a great wickedness it was for 
me to go alone. We were at war, and the country was not 
safe; my men were putting up bullet-proof shutters to the 
house and loading their rifles, and she begged me to have 
no fear for her. She could defend the house against any¬ 
body till I returned. And I laughed with pleasure a little. 
I liked to see her so brave and young and strong. I too 
was young then. At the gate she caught hold of my hand 
and gave it one squeeze and fell back. I made my horse 
stand still outside till I heard the bars of the gate put up 
behind me. There was a great enemy of mine, a great 
noble — and a great rascal too — roaming with a band in 
the neighbourhood. I cantered for four or five miles; there 
had been rain in the night, but the mists had gone up, up —. 
and the face of the earth was clean; it lay smiling to me 
so fresh and innocent — like a little child. Suddenly some 
body fires a volley — twenty shots at least it seemed to me 
I hear bullets sing in my ear, and my hat jumps to the back 
of my head. It was a little intrigue, you understand. They 
got my poor Mohammed to send for me and then laid that 
ambush. I see it all in a minute, and I think — This 
wants a little management. My pony snort, jump, and 


LORD JIM 


195 


stand, and I fall slowly forward with my head on his mane. 
He begins to walk, and with one eye I could see over his 
neck a faint cloud of smoke hanging in front of a clump of 
bamboos to my left. I think — Aha! my friends, why you 
not wait long enough before you shoot? This is not yet 
gelungen. Oh, no! I get hold of my revolver with my right 
hand — quiet — quiet. After all, there were only seven of 
these rascals. They get up from the grass and start run¬ 
ning with their sarongs tucked up, waving spears above 
their heads, and yelling to each other to look out and 
catch the horse, because I was dead. I let them come as 
close as the door here, and then bang, bang, bang — take 
aim each time too. One more shot I fire at a man’s back, 
but I miss. Too far already. And then I sit alone 
on my horse with the clean earth smiling at me, and there 
are the bodies of three men lying on the ground. One was 
curled up like a dog, another on his back had an arm over 
his eyes as if to keep off the sun, and the third man he 
draws up his leg very slowly and makes it with one kick 
straight again. I watch him very carefully from my horse, 
but there is no more — bleibt ganz ruliig — keep still, so. 
And as I looked at his face for some sign of life I observed 
something like a faint shadow pass over his forehead. It 
sras the shadow of this butterfly. Look at the form of the 
wing. This species fly high with a strong flight. I raised 
my eyes and I saw him fluttering away. I think — Can 
it be possible ? And then I lost him. I dismounted and 
went on very slow, leading my horse and holding my 
revolver with one hand and my eyes darting up and down 
and right and left, everywhere ! At last I saw him sitting on 
a small heap of dirt ten feet away. At once my heart began 
to beat quick. I let go my horse, keep my revolver in one 
hand, and with the other snatch my soft felt hat off my 



196 


LORD JIM 


head. One step. Steady. Another step. Flop! I got 
him ! When I got up I shook like a leaf with excitement, 
and when I opened these beautiful wings and made sure 
what a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen I had, 
my head went round and my legs became so weak with 
emotion that I had to sit on the ground. I had greatly 
desired to possess myself of a specimen of that species 
when collecting for the professor. I took long journeys 
and underwent great privations ; I had dreamed of him in 
my sleep, and here suddenly I had him in my fingers — for 
myself! In the words of the poet ’ (he pronounced it 
‘ boet’)— 

4 “ So halt’ ich’s endlich denn in meinen Handen, 

Und nenn’ es in gewissem Sinne mein.” ’ 

He gave to the last word the emphasis of a suddenly 
lowered voice, and withdrew his eyes slowly from my face. 
He began to charge a long-stemmed pipe busily and in 
silence, then, pausing with his thumb on the orifice of the 
bowl, looked again at me significantly. 

“ 1 Yes, my good friend. On that day I had nothing to 
desire; I had greatly annoyed my principal enemy; I was 
young, strong; I had friendship; I had the love ’ (he said 
1 lof’) 1 of woman, a child I had, to make my heart very 
full — and even what I had once dreamed in my sleep had 
come into my hand too! ’ 

“ He struck a match, which flared violently. His 
thoughtful placid face twitched once. 

“ ‘ Friend, wife, child,’ he said slowly, gazing at the small 
flame — ‘ phoo! ’ The match was blown out. He sighed 
and turned again to the glass case. The frail and beauti¬ 
ful wings quivered faintly, as if his breath had for an 
instant called back to life that gorgeous object of his 
dreams. 


LORD JIM 


197 


“ ‘ The work/ he began suddenly, pointing to the scat¬ 
tered slips, and in his usual gentle and cheery tone, ‘ is 
making great progress. I have been this rare specimen 
describing. . . . Na! And what is your good news?’ 

“‘ To tell you the truth, Stein,’ I said with an effort that 
surprised me, ‘1 came here to describe a specimen. . . .’ 

“ ‘ Butterfly ? ’ he asked, with an unbelieving and humor¬ 
ous eagerness. 

Nothing so perfect,’ I answered, feeling suddenly 
dispirited with all sorts of doubts. ‘A man! ’ 

“‘ Ach so! ’ he murmured, and his smiling countenance, 
turned to me, became grave. Then after looking at me 
for awhile he said slowly, ‘Well — I am a man too.’ 

“ Here you have him as he was; he knew how to be so 
generously encouraging as to make a scrupulous man hesi¬ 
tate on the brink of confidence; but if I did hesitate it was 
not for long. 

“ He heard me out, sitting with crossed legs. Sometimes 
his head would disappear completely in a great eruption 
of smoke, and a sympathetic growl would come out from 
the cloud. When I finished he uncrossed his legs, laid 
down his pipe, leaned forward towards me earnestly with 
his elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of his fingers 
together. 

“ ‘ I understand very well. He is romantic.’ 

“ He had diagnosed the case for me, and at first I was 
quite startled to find how simple it was; and indeed our 
conference resembled so much a medical consultation — 
Stein, of learned aspect sitting in an armchair before his 
desk; I, anxious, in another, facing him, but a little to one 
side — that it seemed natural to ask — 

“ ‘ What’s good for it ? ’ 

“ He lifted up a long forefinger. 



198 


LORD JIM 


“ 1 There is only one remedy! One thing alone can us 
from being ourselves cure ! 1 The finger came down on the 
desk with a smart rap. The case which he had made to 
look so simple before became if possible still simpler — 
and altogether hopeless. There was a pause. ‘ Yes/ said 
I, ‘ strictly speaking, the question is not how to get cured, 
but how to live.’ 

“ He approved with his head, a little sadly as it seemed' 
‘Ja! ja! In general, adapting the words of your great 
poet: That is the question. . . / He went on nodding 
sympathetically. . . . ‘ How to be! Ach ! How to bo/ 

“ He stood up with the tips of his fingers resting on the 
desk.' 

“‘ We want in so many different ways to be/ he began 
again. ‘ This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of 
dirt and sits still on it; but man he will never on his heap 
of mud keep still. He want to be so, and again he want to 
be so. . . / He moved his hand up, then down. . . . ‘He 
wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil — and every 
time he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow 
— so fine as he can never be. . . . In a dream. . . / 

“He lowered the glass lid, the automatic lock clicked 
sharply, and taking up the case in both hands he bore it 
religiously away to its place, passing out of the bright 
circle of the lamp into the ring of fainter light — into 
shapeless dusk at last. It had an odd effect—as if these i 
few steps had carried him out of this concrete and per¬ 
plexed world. His tall form, as though robbed of its 
substance, hovered noiselessly over invisible things with 
stooping and indefinite movements; his voice, heard in that 
remoteness where he could be glimpsed mysteriously busy 
with immaterial cares, was no longer incisive, seemed to 
roll voluminous and grave — mellowed by distance. 


.LORD JIM 


199 


“‘And because you not always can keep your eyes shut 
there comes the real trouble — the heart pain — the world 
pain. I tell you, my friend, it is not good for you to find 
you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that 
you not strong enough are, or not clever enough. Ja! . . . 
And all the time you are such a fine fellow too! Wie ? 
Was ? Gott. in Hirnmel! How can that be ? Ha! ha! ha ! 9 

“ The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies 
laughed boisterously. 

“‘Yes! Very funny this terrible thing is. A man that 
is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. 
If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people 
endeavour to do, he drowns — nicht tear? ... No! I tell 
you! The way is to the destructive element submit your¬ 
self, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the 
water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. So if you ask 
me — how to be ?’ ♦ 

“ His voice leaped up extraordinarily strong, as though 
away there in the dusk he had been inspired by some 
whisper of knowledge. ‘ I will tell you! For that too 
there is only one way/ 

“With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up 
in the ring of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright 
circle of the lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast 
like a pistol; his deep-set eyes seemed to pierce through 
me, but his twitching lips uttered no word, and the austere 
exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk vanished from his 
face. The hand that had been pointing at my breast fell, 
and by and by, coming a step nearer, he laid it gently on 
my shoulder. There were things, he said mournfully, that 
perhaps could never be told, only he had lived so much 
alone that sometimes he forgot — he forgot. The light had 
destroyed the assurance which had inspired him in the 


200 


LORD JIM 


distant shadows. He sat down and, with both elbows on 
the desk, rubbed his forehead. ‘ And yet it is true — it is 
true. In the destructive element immerse. . . J He spoke 
in a subdued tone, without looking at me, one hand on 
each side of his face. ‘ That was the way. To follow the 
dream, and again to follow the dream — and so — eivig — 
usque ad jinem. . . The whisper of his conviction seemed 
to open before me a vast and uncertain expanse, as of a 
crepuscular horizon on a plain at dawn — or was it, per¬ 
chance, at the coming of the night? One had not the 
courage to decide; but it was a charming and deceptive 
light, throwing the impalpable poetry of its dimness over 
pitfalls — over graves. His life had begun in sacrifice, in 
enthusiasm for generous ideas; he had travelled very far, 
on various ways, on strange paths, and whatever he fol¬ 
lowed it had been without faltering, and therefore without 
*hame and without regret. In so far he was right. That 
<vas the way, no doubt. Yet for all that the great plain on 
which men wander amongst graves and pitfalls remained 
very desolate under the impalpable poesy of its crepuscular 
light, overshadowed in the centre, circled with a bright 
edge as if surrounded by an abyss full of flames. When at 
last I broke the silence it was to express the opinion that 
no one could be more romantic than himself. 

“ He shook his head slowly, and afterwards looked at me 
with a patient and inquiring glance. It was a shame, he 
said. There we were sitting and talking like two boys, 
instead of putting our heads together to find something 
practical — a practical remedy — for the evil — for the 
great evil — he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent 
smile. Tor all that, our talk did not grow more practical. 
We avoided pronouncing Jim’s name as though we had 
tried to keep flesh and blood out of our discussion, or he 


LOUD JIM 


201 


were nothing but an erring spirit, a suffering and nameless 
shade. ‘Nal’ said Stein, rising. ‘ To-night you sleep 
here, and in the morning we shall do something practical— 
practical. . . He lit a two-branched candlestick and led 
the way. We passed through empty dark rooms, escorted 
by gleams from the lights Stein carried. They glided 
along the waxed floors, sweeping here and there over the 
polished surface of a table, leaped upon a fragmentary 
curve of a piece of furniture, or flashed perpendicularly in 
and out of distant mirrors, while the forms of two men and 
the flicker of two flames could be seen for a moment steal¬ 
ing silently across the depths of a crystalline void. He 
walked slowly a pace in advance with stooping courtesy; 
there was a profound, as it were a listening, quietude on 
his face; the long flaxen locks mixed with white threads 
were scattered thinly upon his slightly bowed neck. 

“‘He is romantic — romantic/ he repeated. ‘And that 
is very bad — very bad. . . . Very good, too/ he added. 

“ ‘ But is he V I queried. 

“ ‘ Gewiss,’ he said, and stood holding up the candela¬ 
brum, but without looking at me. ‘ Evident! What is it 
that by inward pain makes him know himself ? What is it 
that for you and me makes him — exist ? 9 

“At that moment it was difficult to believe in Jim*s 
existence — starting from a country parsonage, blurred by 
crowds of men as by clouds of dust, silenced by the clash¬ 
ing claims of life and death in a material world — but his 
imperishable reality came to me with a convincing, with an 
irresistible force! I saw it vividly, as though in our 
progress through the lofty silent rooms amongst fleeting 
gleams of light and the sudden revelations of human fig¬ 
ures stealing with flickering flames within unfathomable 
j and pellucid depths, we had approached nearer to absolute 




202 


LORD JIM 


Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elusive, obscure, half 
submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery. ‘ Perhaps 
he is/ I admitted with a slight laugh, whose unexpectedly 
loud reverberation made me lower my voice directly; ‘ but 
I am sure you are.’ With his head dropping on his breast 
and the light held high he began to walk again. ‘ Well -- 
I exist, too/ he said. 

“ He preceded me. My eyes followed his movements, 
but what I did see was not the head of the firm, the wel¬ 
come guest at afternoon receptions, the correspondent of 
learned societies, the entertainer of stray naturalists; I saw 
only the reality of his destiny, which he had known how to 
follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humble 
surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, 
love, war — in all the exalted elements of romance. At 
the door of my room he faced me. ‘Yes/ I said, as though 
carrying on a discussion, ‘and amongst other things you 
dreamed foolishly of a certain butterfly ; but when one fine 
morning your dream came in your way you did not let the 
splendid opportunity escape. Did you ? Whereas he . . .’ 
Stein lifted his hand. ‘ And do you know how many op¬ 
portunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost that 
had come in my way?’ He shook his head regretfully. 
‘ It seems to me that some would have been very fine — if I 
had made them come true. Do you know how many? 
Perhaps I myself don’t know.’ ‘Whether his were fine or 
not/ I said, ‘ he knows of one which he certainly did not 
catch.* ‘Everybody knows of one or two like that/ said 
Stein; ‘ and that is the trouble — the great trouble. . . .* 

“ He shook hands on the threshold, peered into my room 
under his raised arm. ‘Sleep well. And to-morrow we 
must do something practical — practical. . . * 

“ Though his own room was beyond mine I saw him 


LORD JIM 


203 


return the way he came. He was going back to his 
butterflies.” 


CHAPTER XXI 

“ I don’t suppose any of you had ever heard of Patu¬ 
san?” Marlow resumed, after a silence occupied in the 
careful lighting of a cigar. "It does not matter; there’s 
many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of a 
night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the 
sphere of its activities and of no earthly importance to any¬ 
body but to the astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly 
about its composition, weight, path — the irregularities of 
its conduct, the aberrations of its light, — a sort of scien¬ 
tific scandal-mongering. Thus with Patusan. It was re¬ 
ferred to knowingly in the inner government circles in 
Batavia, especially as to its irregularities and aberrations, 
and it was known by name to some few, very few, in the 
mercantile world. Nobody, however, had been there, and I 
suspect no one desired to go there in person, just as an 
astronomer, I should fancy, would strongly object to being 
transported into a distant heavenly body, where, parted 
from his earthly emoluments, he would be bewildered by 
the view of an unfamiliar heavens. However, neither 
heavenly bodies nor astronomers have anything to do with 
Patusan. It was Jim who went there. I only meant you 
to understand that had Stein arranged to send him into a 
! star of the fifth magnitude the change could not have been 
greater. He left his earthly failings behind him and that 
1 sort of reputation he had, and there was a totally new set 
of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work upon. 

, Entirely new, entirely remarkable. And he got hold of 
them in a remarkable way. 




204 


LORD JIM 


“ Stein was the man who knew more about Patusan thar 
anybody else. More than was known in the government 
circles, I suspect. I have no doubt he had been there, 
either in his butterfly-hunting days or later on, when he 
tried in his incorrigible way to season with a pinch of 
romance the fattening dishes of his commercial kitchen. 
There were very few places in the Archipelago he had not 
seen in the original dusk of their being, before light (and 
even electric light) had been carried into them for the sake 
of better morality and — and — well — the greater profit 
too. It was at breakfast of the morning following our 
talk about Jim that he mentioned the place, after I had 
quoted poor Brierly’s remark: ‘ Let him creep twenty feet 
underground and stay there/ He looked up at me with 
interested attention, as though I had been a rare insect. 
i This could be done too/ he remarked, sipping his coffee 
‘ Bury him in some sort/ I explained. ‘ One doesn’t like 
to do it of course, but it would be the best thing, seeing 
what he is.’ ‘ Yes ; he is young/ Stein mused. ‘ The 
youngest human being now in existence/ I affirmed. 
‘ Schon. There’s Patusan/ he went on in the same tone. 
. . . And the woman is dead now/ he added incompre¬ 
hensibly. 

“ Of course I don’t know that story; I can only guess that 
once before Patusan had been used as a grave for some sin, 
transgression, or misfortune. It is impossible to suspect 
Stein. The only woman that had ever existed for him was 
the Malay girl he called ‘ My wife the princess/ or, more 
rarely, in moments of expansion , 4 the mother of my Emma.’ 
Who was the woman he had mentioned in connection with 
Patusan I can’t say; but from his allusions I understand 
she had been an educated and very good-looking Dutch* 
Malay girl, with a tragic, or perhaps only a pitiful, history 


LORD JIM 


205 


whose most painful part no doubt was her marriage with a 
Malacca Portuguese who had been clerk in some commer¬ 
cial house in the Dutch colonies. I gathered from Stein 
that this man was an unsatisfactory person in more ways 
than one, all being more or less indefinite and offensive 
It was solely for his wife’s sake that Stein had appointed 
him manager of Stein & Co.’s trading post in Patusan; but 
commercially the arrangement was not a success, at any 
rate for the firm, and now the woman had died, Stein was 
disposed to try another agent there. The Portuguese, 
whose name was Cornelius, considered himself a very 
deserving but ill-used person, entitled by his abilities to 
a better position. This man Jim would have to relieve 
1 But I don’t think he will go away from the place/ 
remarked Stein. 1 That has nothing to do with me. It was 
I only for the sake of the woman that I . . . But as I think 
there is a daughter left, I shall let him, if he likes to stay, 
i keep the old house. 

“ Patusan is a remote district of a native-ruled state, 
and the chief settlement bears the same name. At a point 
on the river about forty miles from the sea, where the first 
houses come into view, there can be seen rising above 
the level of the forests the summits of two steep hills 
very close together, and separated by what looks like a 
deep fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a 
matter of fact the valley between is nothing but a narrow 
ravine; the appearance from the settlement is of one 
irregularly conical hill split in two, and with the two 
halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the 
full, the moon, as seen from the open space in front of 
Jim’s house (he had a very fine house in the native style 
when I visited him), rose exactly behind these hills, its 
diffused light at first throwing 1 the two masses into 





206 


LORD JIM 


intensely black relief, and then the nearly perfect disk, 
glowing ruddily, appeared, gliding upwards between th« 
sides of the chasm, till it floated away above the summits, 
as if escaping from a yawning grave in gentle triumph. 
‘Wonderful effect/ said Jim by my side. ‘Worth seeing. 
Is it not ? ’ 

“ And this question was put with a note of personal pride 
that made me smile, as though he had had a hand in 
regulating that unique spectacle. He had regulated so 
many things in Patusan ! Things that would have appeared 
as much beyond his control as the motions of the moon and 
the stars. 

“ It was inconceivable. That was the distinctive quality 
of the part into which Stein and I had tumbled him unwit¬ 
tingly, with no other notion than to get him out of the way; 
out of his own way, be it understood. That was our main 
purpose, though, I own, I might have had another motive 
which had influenced me a little. I was about to go home 
for a time; and it may be I desired, more than I was aware 
of myself, to dispose of him — to dispose of him, you 
understand — before I left. I was going home, and he had 
come to me from there, with his miserable trouble and his 
shadowy claim, like a man panting under a burden in a 
mist. I cannot say I had ever seen him distinctly — not 
even to this day, after I had my last view of him; but it 
seemed to me that the less I understood the more I was 
bound to him in the name of that doubt which is the insep¬ 
arable part of our knowledge. I did not know so much 
more about myself. And then, I repeat, I was going 
home — to that home distant enough for all its hearth¬ 
stones to be like one hearthstone, by which the humblest 
of us has the right to sit. We wander in our thousands over 
the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning 



LORD JIM 


207 


beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of 
bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home 
must be like going to render an account. We return to 
face our superiors, our kindred, our friends — those whom 
we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have 
neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible, and bereft of 
ties,—even those for whom home holds no dear face, nc 
familiar voice,—even they have to meet the spirit thal 
dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its val¬ 
leys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees 
— a mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, 
to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one 
must return with a clear conscience. All this may seem tc 
you sheer sentimentalism ; and indeed very few of us have 
the will or the capacity to look consciously under the sur^ 
face of familiar emotions. There are the girls we love, the 
men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the 
opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that 
you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn 
to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. I think it is the 
lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their 
own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land 
itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable 
spirit — it is those who understand best its severity, its 
saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, 
to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but we all 
feel it though, and I say all without exception, because 
those who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass 
has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; 
and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his 
faith together with his life. I don’t know how much Jim 
understood; but I know he felt, he felt confusedly but 
powerfully, the demand of some such truth or some such 



208 


LORD JIM 


illusion — I don’t care how you call it, there is so little dif¬ 
ference, and the difference means so little. The thing is tha f 
in virtue of his feeling he mattered. He would never go 
home now. Not he. Never. Had he been capable of pic¬ 
turesque manifestations he would have shuddered at the 
thought and made you shudder too. But he was not of that 
sort, though he was expressive enough in his way. Before 
the idea of going home he would grow desperately stiff and 
immovable, with lowered chin and pouted lips, and with 
those candid blue eyes of his glowering darkly under a 
frown, as if before something unbearable, as if before some¬ 
thing revolting. There was imagination in that hard skull 
of his, over which the thick clustering hair fitted like a cap. 
As to me, I have no imagination (I would be more certain 
about him to-day, if I had), and I do not mean to imply 
that I figured to myself the spirit of the land uprising 
above the white cliffs of Dover, to ask me what I — return¬ 
ing with no bones broken, so to speak — had done with m3 
very young brother. I could not make such a mistake. 1 
knew very well he was of those about whom there is no 
inquiry; I had seen better men go out, disappear, vanish 
utterly without provoking a sound of curiosity or sorrow. 
The spirit of the land, as becomes the ruler of great enter¬ 
prises, is careless of innumerable lives. Woe to the strag¬ 
glers ! We exist only in so far as we hang together. He 
had straggled in a way; he had not hung on; but he was 
aware of it with an intensity that made him touching, just 
as a man’s more intense life makes his death more touch¬ 
ing than the death of a tree. I happened to be handy, 
and I happened to be touched. That’s all there is to it. 
I was concerned as to the way he would go out. It would 
have hurt me if, for instance, he had taken to drink. The 
earth is so small that I was afraid of, some day, being 


LORD JIM 


209 


waylaid by a blear-eyed, swollen-faced, besmirched loafer, 
with no soles to his canvas shoes, and with a flutter of 
rags about the elbows, who, on the strength of old acquaint¬ 
ance, would ask for a loan of five dollars. You know the 
awful jaunty bearing of these scarecrows coming to you 
' from a decent past, the rasping, careless voice, the half- 
[ averted impudent glances — those meetings more trying 
to a man who believes in the solidarity of our lives than 
the sight of an impenitent death-bed to a priest. That, 
to tell you the truth, was the only danger I could see for 
him and for me; but I also mistrusted my want of imagi¬ 
nation. It might even come to something worse, in some 
way it was beyond my powers of fancy to foresee. He 
wouldn’t let me forget how imaginative he was, and your 
imaginative people swing farther in any direction, as if 
given a longer scope of cable in the uneasy anchorage of 
life. They do. They take to drink, too. It may be I 
was belittling him by such a fear. How could I tell ? 
Even Stein could say no more than that he was romantic. 
I only knew he was one of us. And what business had 
he to be romantic? I am telling you so much about my 
own instinctive feelings and bemused reflections because 
i there remains so little to be told of him. He existed fot 
me, and after all it is only through me that he exists ioi 
you. I’ve led him out by the hand; I have paraded hiu 
oefore you. Were my commonplace fears unjust ? I won’*- 
say — not even now. You may be able to tell better, since 
the proverb has it that the onlookers see most of the game. 

| At any rate, they were superfluous. He did not go out, 
not at all; on the contrary, he came on wonderfully, came 
on straight as a die and in excellent form, which showed 
that he could stay as well as spurt. I ought to be de¬ 
lighted, for it is a victory in which I had taken my part 





210 


LORD JIM 


but I am not so pleased as I would have expected to be. 
I ask myself whether his rush had really carried him out 
of that mist in which he loomed interesting if not very 
big, with floating outlines — a straggler yearning incon¬ 
solably for his humble place in the ranks. And besides, 
the last word is not said, — probably shall never be said. 
Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which 
through all our stammerings is of course our onty and 
abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last 
words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would 
shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say 
our last word — the last word of our love, of our desire, 
faith, remorse, submission, revolt. The heaven and the 
earth must not be shaken, I suppose — at least, not by us 
who know so many truths about either. My last words 
about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved great¬ 
ness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or 
rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that 
I mistrust, but your minds. I could be eloquent were I 
not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to 
feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is 
respectable to have no illusions — and safe — and profitable 
— and dull. Yet you too in your time must have known 
the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the 
shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck 
from a cold stone — and as short-lived, alas ! ” 


CHAPTER XXII 

“The conquest of love, honour, men’s confidence — the 
pride of it, the power of it, are fit materials for a heroic 
tale; only our minds are struck by the externals of such <1 
success, and to Jim’s successes there were no externals 





LORD JIM 


211 


Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the sight of an in¬ 
different world, and the noise of the white surf along the 
coast overpowered the voice of fame. The stream of civili¬ 
sation, as if divided on a headland a hundred miles north 
of Patusan, branches east and southeast, leaving its plains 
and valleys, its old trees and its old mankind, neglected and 
isolated, such as an insignificant and crumbling islet be¬ 
tween the two branches of a mighty, devouring stream. You 
find the name of the country pretty often in collections of 
old voyages. The seventeenth-century traders went there 
for pepper, because the passion for pepper seemed to burn 
like a flame of love in the breast of Dutch and English 
adventurers about the time of James the First. Where 
wouldn’t they go for pepper! For a bag of pepper they 
would cut each ^other’s throats without hesitation, and 
would forswear their souls, of which they were so careful 
otherwise: the bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them 
defy death in a thousand shapes; the unknown seas, the 
loathsome and strange diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, 
pestilence, and despair. It made them great! By heavens! 
it made them heroic; and it made them pathetic, too, in their 
craving for trade with the inflexible death levying its toll 
on young and old. It seems impossible to believe that 
mere greed could hold men to such a steadfastness of pur¬ 
pose, to such a blind persistence in endeavour and sacrifice. 
And indeed those who adventured their persons and lives 
risked all they had for a slender reward. They left their 
bones to lie bleaching on distant shores, so that wealth 
might flow to the living at home. To us, their less tried 
successors, they appear magnified, not as agents of trade, 
but as instruments of a recorded destiny, pushing out 
into the unknown in obedience to an inward voice, to an im¬ 
pulse beating in the blood, to a dream of the future. They 




212 


LORD JIM 


were wonderful; and it must be owned they were ready for 
the wonderful. They recorded it complacently in their suf¬ 
ferings, in the aspect of the seas, in the customs of strange 
nations, in the glory of splendid rulers. 

“ In Patusan they had found lots of pepper, and had been 
impressed by the magnificence and the wisdom of the Sul¬ 
tan ; but somehow, after a century of checkered intercourse, 
the country seems to drop gradually out of the trade. Per¬ 
haps the pepper had given out. Be it as it may, nobody 
cares for it now; the glory has departed, the Sultan is an 
imbecile youth with two thumbs on his left hand and an 
uncertain and beggarly revenue extorted from a miserable 
population and stolen from him by his many uncles. 

“ This of course I have from Stein. He gave me their 
names and a short sketch of life and character of each. He 
was as full of information about native States as an official 
report, but infinitely more amusing. He had to know. He 
traded in so many, and in some districts — as in Patusan, 
for instance — his firm was the only one to have an agency 
by special permit from the Dutch authorities. The Govern¬ 
ment trusted his discretion, and it was understood that he 
took all the risks. The men he employed understood that 
too, but he made it worth their while apparently. He was 
perfectly frank with me over the breakfast-table in the 
morning. As far as he was aware (the last news were thir¬ 
teen months old, he stated precisely), utter insecurity for 
life and property was the normal condition. There were in 
Patusan antagonistic forces, and one of them was Rajah 
Allang, the worst of the Sultan’s uncles, the governor of 
the river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and 
ground down to the point of extinction the country-born 
Malays, who, utterly defenceless, had not even the resource 
of emigrating, — ‘for indeed,’ as Stein remarked, ‘where 



LORD JIM 


213 


could they go, and how could they get away?’ No doubt 
they did not even desire to get away. The world (which is 
circumscribed by lofty impassable mountains) has been 
given into the hand of the high-born, and this Rajah they 
knew : he was of their own royal house. I had the pleasure 
of meeting the gentleman later on. He was a dirty little 
used-up old man with evil eyes and a weak mouth, who 
swallowed an opium pill every two hours, and in defiance 
of common decency wore his hair uncovered and falling in 
wild stringy locks about his wizened, grimy face. When 
giving audience he would clamber upon a sort of narrow 
stage erected in a hall like a ruinous barn with a rotten 
bamboo floor, through the cracks of which you could see 
twelve or fifteen feet below the heaps of refuse and garbage 
of all kinds lying under the house. That is where and how 
he received us when, accompanied by Jim, I paid him a 
visit of ceremony. There were about forty people in the 
room, and perhaps three times as many in the great 
courtyard below. There was constant movement, coming 
and going, pushing and murmuring, at our backs. A few 
youths in gay silks glared from the distance; the majority, 
slaves and humble dependants, were half naked, in ragged 
sarongs, dirty with ashes and mud-stains. I had never seen 
Jim look so grave, so self-possessed, in an impenetrable, im¬ 
pressive way. In the midst of these dark-faced men, his 
stalwart figure in white apparel, the gleaming clusters of 
his fair hair, seemed to catch all the sunshine that trickled 
through the cracks in the closed shutters of that dim hall, 
with its walls of mats and a roof of thatch. He appeared 
like a creature not only of another kind, but of anothei 
essence. Had they not seen him come up in a canoe they 
might have thought he had descended upon them from the 
clouds He did, however, come in a crazy dug-out, sitting 



914 


LORD JIM 


(very still and with, his knees together, for fear of overturn 
mg the thing) — sitting on a tin box — which I had lent 
him — nursing on his lap a revolver of the navy pattern —• 
presented by me on parting — which, through the interposi¬ 
tion of Providence, or through some wrong-headed notion, 
that was just like him, or less from sheer instinctive sagar 
lity, he had decided to carry unloaded. That’s how he' 
ascended the Patusan river. Nothing could have been 
more prosaic and more unsafe, more extravagantly casual, 
more lonely. Strange, this fatality that would cast the 
complexion of a flight upon all his acts, of impulsive unre¬ 
flecting desertion— of a jump into the unknown. 

“It is precisely the casualness of it that strikes me 
most. Neither Stein nor I had a clear conception of what 
might be on the other side when we, metaphorically speak¬ 
ing, took him up and hove him over the wall with scant 
ceremony. At the moment I merely wished to achieve his 
disappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a sen- 
timental motive. He had a notion of paying off (in kind, 
I suppose) the old debt he had never forgotten. Indeed 
he had been all his life especially friendly to anybody from 
the British Isles. His late benefactor, it is true, was j. 
Scot — even to the length of being called Alexander McNeil 
^and Jim came from a long way south of the Tweed; but 
at the distance of six or seven thousand miles Great Brit¬ 
ain, though never diminished; looks foreshortened enough 
even to its own children to rob such details of their impor¬ 
tance. Stein was excusable, and his hinted intentions were 
so generous that I begged him most earnestly to keep them 
secret for a time. I felt that no consideration of personal 
advantage should be allowed to influence Jim; that not 
even the risk of such influence should be run. We had 
to deal with another sort of reality. He wanted a refuge, 


LORD JIM 


215 


and a refuge at the cost of danger should be offered him — 
nothing more. 

“Upon every other point I was perfectly frank with 
him, and I even (as I believed at the time) exaggerated 
the danger of the undertaking. As a matter of fact I did 
not do it justice; his first day in Patusan was nearly his 
last — would have been his last if he had not been so 
reckless or so hard on himself and had condescended to 
load that revolver. I remember, as I unfolded our precious 
scheme for his retreat, how his stubborn but weary resig¬ 
nation was gradually replaced by surprise, interest, won¬ 
der, and by boyish eagerness. This was a chance he had 
been dreaming of. He couldn’t think how he merited that 
I . . . He would be shot if he could see to what he owed 
. . . And it was Stein, Stein the merchant, who . . . but 
of course it was me he had to . . . I cut him short. He 
was not articulate, and his gratitude caused me inexplicable 
pain. I told him that if he owed this chance to any one 
especially, it was to an old Scot of whom he had never 
heard, who had died many years ago, of whom little was 
remembered besides a roaring voice and a rough sort of 
honesty. There was really no one to receive his thanks. 
Stein was passing on to a young man the help he had 
received in his own young days, and I had done no more 
: than to mention his name Upon this he coloured, and, 
twisting a bit of paper in his fingers, he remarked bashfully 
that I had always trusted him. 

“I admitted that such was the case, and added after a 
pause that I wished he had been able to follow my example. 
i You think I don’t ? ’ he asked uneasily, and remarked in 
a mutter that one had to get some sort of show first; then 
brightening up, and in a loud voice he protested he would 
give me no occasion to regret my confidence, which — 
which . . 







216 


LORD JIM 


“'Do not misapprehend/ I interrupted. 'It is not in 
your power to make me regret anything.’ There would 
be no regrets; but if there were, it would be altogether 
my own affair: on the other hand, I wished him to under¬ 
stand clearly that this arrangement, this — this — experi¬ 
ment, was his own doing; he was responsible for it, and 
no one else. ' Why ? Why! ’ he stammered, ' this is the 
very thing that I ’ ... I begged him not to be dense, and 
he looked more puzzled than ever. He was in a fair way 
to make life intolerable to himself. . . . 'Do you think 
so?’ he asked, disturbed; but in a moment added confi¬ 
dently, 'I was going on, though. Was I not?’ It was 
impossible to be angry with him: I could not help a smile, 
and told him that in the old days people who went on like 
this were on the way of becoming hermits in a wilderness. 
' Hermits be hanged! ’ he commented with engaging impul¬ 
siveness. Of course he didn’t mind a wilderness. . . . ' I 
was glad of it/ I said. That was where he would be going 
to. He would find it lively enough, I ventured to promise. 
' Yes, yes/ he said keenly. He had shown a desire, I con¬ 
tinued inflexibly, to go out and shut the door after him. 

. ' Did I ? ’ he interrupted in a strange access of gloom 
that seemed to envelop him from head to foot like the 
shadow of a passing cloud. He was wonderfully expres¬ 
sive after all. Wonderfully ! ' Did I ? ’ he repeated bit¬ 

terly. ' You can’t say I made much noise about it. And 
I can keep it up, too — only, confound it! you show me a 
dQor.’ . . . 'Very well. Pass on/ I struck in. I could 
make him a solemn promise that it would be shut behind 
him with a vengeance. His fate, whatever it was, would 
be ignored, because the country, for all its rotten state, was 
not judged ripe for interference. Once he got in, it would 
he for the outside world as though he had never existed. 


LORD JIM 


217 


He would have nothing but the soles of his two feet to 
stand upon, and he would have first to find his ground at 
that. e Never existed — that’s it, by Jove,’ he murmured 
to himself. His eyes, fastened upon my lips, sparkled. 
If he had thoroughly understood the conditions, I con¬ 
cluded, he had better jump into the first gharry he could 
see and drive on to Stein’s house for his final instructions. 
He flung out of the room before I had fairly finished 
speaking.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 

“He did not return till next morning. He had been 
kept to dinner and for the night. There never had been 
such a wonderful man as Mr. Stein. He had in his pocket 
a letter for Cornelius (‘ the Johnnie who’s going to get the 
sack,’ he explained with a momentary drop in his elation), 
and he exhibited with glee a silver ring, such as natives 
use, worn down very thin and showing faint traces of 
chasing. 

“ This was his introduction to an old chap called Dora 
min — one of the principal men out there — a big pot — 
who had been Mr. Stein’s friend in that country where he 
had all these adventures. Mr. Stein called him i war- 
comrade.’ War-comrade was good. Wasn’t it? And 
didn’t Mr. Stein speak English wonderfully well? Said 
he had learned it in Celebes — of all places! That was 
awfully funny. Was it not? He did speak with an 
accent — a twang — did I notice ? That chap Doramin had 
given him the ring. They had exchanged presents when 
they parted for the last time. Sort of promising eternal 
friendship. He called it fine—did I not? They had to 
aiake a dash for dear life out of the country when that 



218 


LORD JIM 


Mohammed — Mohammed — What’s-his-name had been 
killed. I knew the story, of course. Seemed a beastly 
shame, didn’t it? . . . 

“ He ran on like this, forgetting his plate, with a kniff 
and fork in hand (he had found me at tiffin), slight^ 
flushed, and with his eyes darkened many shades, which 
was with him a sign of excitement. The ring was a sort 
of credential. (‘ It’s like something you read of in books,’ 
he threw in appreciatively), and Doramin would do his 
best for Him. Mr. Stein had been the means of saving 
that chap’s life on some occasion; purely by accident, Mr. 
Stein had said, but he — Jim —had his own opinion about 
that. Mr. Stein was just the man to look out for such 
accidents. No matter. Accident or purpose, this would 
serve his turn immensely. Hoped to goodness the jolly 
old beggar had not gone off the hooks meantime. Mr. Stein 
could not tell. There had been no news for more than 
a year; they were kicking up no end of an all-fired row 
amongst themselves, and the river was closed. Jolly awk¬ 
ward, this; but, no fear; he would manage to find a crack 
\o get in. 

“He impressed, almost frightened, me with his elated 
*attle. He was voluble like a youngster on the eve of ? 
ong holiday with the prospect of delightful scrapes, and 
such an attitude of mind in a grown man and in this con¬ 
nection had in it something phenomenal, a little mad, 
dangerous, unsafe. I was on the point of entreating him 
to take things seriously when he dropped his knife and 
fork (he had begun eating, or rather swallowing food, as 
it were, unconsciously), and began a search all round his 
plate. The ring! The ring! Where the devil . . . Ah’ 
Here it was . . . He closed his big hand on it, and tried 
.11 his pockets one after another. Jove! wouldn’t do to 


LORD JIM 


219 


lose the thing. He meditated gravely over his fist. Had 
it? Would hang the bally affair round his neck! And he 
proceeded to do this immediately, producing a string (which 
looked like a bit of a cotton shoe-lace) for the purpose 
There! That would do the trick! It would be the deuce 
if . . . He seemed to catch sight of my face for the first 
time, and it steadied him a little. I probably didn’t realise, 
he said with a naive gravity, how much importance he 
attached to that token. It meant a friend; and it is a good 
thing to have a friend. He knew something about that. 
He nodded at me expressively, but before my disclaiming 
gesture he leaned his head on his hand and for a while sat 
silent, playing thoughtfully with the bread-crumbs on the 
cloth . . . ‘ Slam the door — that was jolly well put,’ he 
cried, and jumping up, began to pace the room, reminding 
me by the set of the shoulders, the turn of his head, the 
headlong and uneven stride, of that night when he had 
paced thus, confessing, explaining — what you will — but, 
in the last instance, living — living before me, under his 
own little cloud, with all his unconscious subtlety which 
could draw consolation from the very source of sorrow. It 
was the same mood, the same and different, like a fickle 
companion that, to-day guiding you on the true path, with 
the same eyes, the same step, the same impulse, to-morrow 
will lead you hopelessly astray. His tread was assured, 
his straying, darkened eyes seemed to search the room for 
something. One of his footfalls somehow sounded louder 
than the other — the fault of his boots probably — and gave 
a curious impression of an invisible halt in his gait. One 
of his hands was rammed deep into his trousers’ pocket, 
the other waved suddenly above his head. ‘Siam the 
door! ’ he shouted. ‘ I’ve been waiting for that. I’ll show 
yet . I’ll . . T’m ready for any confounded thing . 


m 


LORD JIM 


I’ve been dreaming of it . . Jove! (Jet out of thia 

Jove! This is luck at last . . . You wait. I’ll . . 

“ He tossed his head fearlessly, and I confess that foi 
the first and last time in our acquaintance I perceived 
myself unexpectedly to be thoroughly sick of him. Why 
these vapourings ? He was stumping about the room 
flourishing his arm absurdly, and now and then feeling or 
his breast for the ring under his clothes. Where was the 
sense of such exaltation in a man appointed to be a trad¬ 
ing-clerk, ana m a place where there was no trade — at 
that ? Why hurl defiance at the universe ? This was not 
a proper frame of mind to approach any undertaking; an 
improper frame of mind not only for him, I said, but for 
any man. He stood still, over me. Did I think so? he 
asked, by no means subdued, and with a smile in which 
I seemed to detect suddenly something insolent. But then 
T im twenty years his senior. Youth is insolent; it is its 
right — its necessity; it has got to assert itself, and all as¬ 
sertion in this world of doubts is a defiance, is an insolence. 
He went off into a far corner, and coming back, he, figura¬ 
tively speaking, turned to rend me. I spoke like that be¬ 
cause I — even I, who had been no end kind to him — even 
I remembered — remembered — against him — what — what 
had happened. And what about others — the — the—world. 
Where’s the wonder he wanted to get out, meant to get out, 
meant to stay out — by heavens ! And I talked about proper 
frames of mind! 

“‘It is not I or the world who remember,’ I shouted. 
‘ It is you — you, who remember. ’ 

“He did not flinch, and went on with heat, ‘Forget 
everything, everybody, everybody.’ . His voice fell 
* But you,’ he added. 

ut Yes — me too — if it would help,’ I said, also in a low 




LORD JIM 


221 


tone. After this we remained silent and languid for a time 
as if exhausted. Then he began again, composedly, and 
told me that Mr. Stein had instructed him to wait for 
a month or so, to see whether it was possible for him to 
remain, before he began building a new house for himself, 
so as to avoid ‘ vain expense.’ He did make use of funny 
expressions—Stein did. ‘Vain expense’ was good. . 
Remain ? Why! of course. He would hang on. Let him 
only get in — that’s all; he would answer for it he would 
remain. Never get out. It was easy enough to remain. 

Don’t be foolhardy,’ I said, rendered uneasy by his 
threatening tone. ‘ If you only live long enough you will 
Want to come back.’ 

“ ‘ Come back to what ? ’ he asked absently, with his eyes 
fixed upon the face of a clock on the wall. 

“ I was silent for a while. ‘ Is it to be never, then ? ’ I 
said. ‘ Never,’ he repeated dreamily without looking at me, 
und then flew into sudden activity. ‘Jove! Two o’clock, 
and I sail at four ? ’ 

“ It was true. A brigantine of Stein’s was leaving for 
the westward that afternoon, and he had been instructed to 
take his passage in her, only no orders to delay the sailing 
had been given. I suppose Stein forgot. He made a rush 
to get his things while I went aboard my ship, where he 
promised to call on his way to the outer roadstead. He 
turned up accordingly in a great hurry and with a small 
leather valise in his hand. This wouldn’t do, and I offered 
him an old tin trunk of mine supposed to be water-tight, or 
at least damp-tight. He effected the transfer by the simple 
process of shooting out the contents of his valise as you 
would empty a sack of wheat. I saw three books in the 
tumble; two small, in dark covers, and a thick green-and- 
gold volume — a half-crown complete Shakespeare. ‘ You 


222 


LORD JIM 


read this ?’ I asked. ‘ Yes. Best thing to cheer up a fellow/ 
he said hastily. I was struck by tb»« appreciation, but 
there was no time for Shakespearian talk. A heavy revolver 
and two small boxes of cartridges were lying on the cuddy 
table. ‘ Pray take this/ I said. ‘ It may help you to remain/ 
No sooner were these words out of my mouth than I per¬ 
ceived what grim meaning they could bear. 4 May help yon 
to get in/ I corrected myself remorsefully. He however 
was not troubled by obscure meanings; he thanked me 
effusively and bolted out, calling Good-bye over his shoulder 
I heard his voice through the ship’s side urging his boat 
men to give way, and looking out of the stern-port I saw 
the boat rounding under the counter. He sat in her, lean¬ 
ing forward, exciting his men with voice and gestures ; and 
as he had kept the revolver in his hand and seemed to be pre¬ 
senting it at their heads, I shall never forget the scared faces 
of the four Javanese, and the frantic swing of their stroke 
which snatched that vision from under my eyes. Then 
turning away, the first thing I saw were the two boxes of car¬ 
tridges on the cuddy-table. He had forgotten to take them 
“ I ordered my gig manned at once; but Jim’s rowers 
under the impression that their lives hung on a thread 
while they had that madman in the boat, made such 
excellent time that before I had traversed half the distance 
between the two vessels I caught sight of him clambering 
over the rail, and of his box being passed up. All the 
brigantine’s canvas was loose, her mainsail was set, and 
the windlass was just beginning to clink as I stepped upon 
her deck: her master, a dapper little half-caste of forty or 
so, in a blue flannel suit, with lively eyes, his round face 
the colour of lemon-peel, and with a thin little black mous« 
tache drooping on each side of his thick, dark lips, came 
forward smirking. He turned out, notwithstanding hit 


LORD JIM 


223 


self-satisfied and cheery exterior, to be of a careworn tem¬ 
perament. In answer to a remark of mine (while J im had 
gone below for a moment) he said, 1 Oh, yes. Patusas..’ He 
was going to carry the gentleman to the mouth of the river, 
but would ‘ never ascend/ His flowing English seemed to 
be derived from a dictionary compiled by a lunatic. Had 
Mr. Stein desired him to ‘ ascend,’ he would have 1 rever¬ 
entially ’ — (I think he wanted to say respectfully — but 
devil only knows) —‘ reverentially made objects for the 
safety of properties.’ If disregarded, he would have pre¬ 
sented 1 resignation to quit.’ Twelve months ago he had 
made his last voyage there, and though Mr. Cornelius ‘ pro¬ 
pitiated many offertories ’ to Mr. Rajah Allang and the 
‘ principal populations,’ on conditions which made the trade 
1 a snare and ashes in the mouth,’ yet his ship had been 
fired upon from the woods by 1 irresponsive parties ’ all the 
way down the river; which causing his crew ‘from ex¬ 
posure to limb to remain silent in hidings,’ the brigantine 
was nearly stranded on a sandbank at the bar, where she 
* would have been perishable beyond the act of man.’ The 
angry disgust at the recollection, the pride of his fluency, 
to which he turned an attentive ear, struggled for the pos- 
session of his broad, simple face. He scowled and beamed 
at me, and watched with satisfaction the undeniable effect 
of his phraseology. Dark frowns ran swiftly over the 
placid sea, and the brigantine, with her fore-topsail to 
the mast and her main-boom amidships, seemed bewildered 
amongst the cat’s-paws. He told me further, gnashing his 
teeth, that the Rajah was a ‘laughable hyaena’ (can’t 
imagine how he got hold of hyaenas); while somebody else 
was many times falser than the ‘ weapons of a crocodile." 
Keeping one eye on the movements of his crew forward, 
he let loose his volubility—comparing the place to a ‘ cage 


224 


LORD JIM 


of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence/ I fancy he 
meant impunity. He had no intention, he cried, to ‘ exhibit 
himself to be made attached purposefully to robbery/ The 
long-drawn wails, giving the time for the pull of the men 
catting the anchor, came to an end, and he lowered his voice. 
‘ Plenty too much enough of Patusan,’ he concluded, with 
energy. 

“ I heard afterwards he had been so indiscreet as to get 
himself tied up by the neck with a rattan halter to a post 
planted in the middle of a mud-hole before the Rajah’s 
house. He spent the best part of a day and a whole night 
in that unwholesome situation, but there is every reason to 
believe the thing had been meant as a sort of joke. He 
brooded for a while over that horrid memory, I suppose, 
and then addressed in a quarrelsome tone the man coming 
aft to the helm. When he turned to me again it was to 
speak judicially, without passion. He would take the 
gentleman to the mouth of the river at Batu Kring (Patu- 
san town ‘being situated internally,’ he remarked, ‘thirty 
miles ’). But in his eyes, he continued — a tone of bored, 
weary conviction replacing his previous voluble delivery — 
the gentleman was already ‘ in the similitude of a corpse/ 
‘ What ? What do you say ? ’ I asked. He assumed a 
startlingly ferocious demeanour, and imitated to perfection 
the act of stabbing from behind. ‘Already like the body 
of one deported,’ he explained, with the insufferably con¬ 
ceited air of his kind after what they imagine a display of 
cleverness. Behind him I perceived Jim smiling silently 
at me, and with a raised hand checking the exclamation on 
my lips. 

“Then, while the half-caste, bursting with importance, 
shouted his orders, while the yards swung creaking and the 
heavy boom came surging over, Jim and I, alone a? it wem 


LORD JIM 


225 


to leeward of the mainsail, clasped each other’s hands and 
exchanged the last hurried words. My heart was freed 
from that dull resentment which had existed side by side 
sv'ith interest in his fate. The absurd chatter of the half- 
3aste had given more reality to the miserable dangers of his 
path than Stein’s careful statements. On that occasion the 
sort of formality that had been always present in our inter¬ 
course vanished from our speech. I believe I called him 
4 dear boy,’ and he tacked on the words ‘ old man ’ to some 
half-uttered expression of gratitude, as though his risk 
set off against my years had made us more equal in age 
and in feeling. There was a moment of real and pro¬ 
found intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a glimpse 
of some everlasting, of some saving truth. He exerted 
himself to soothe me as though he had been the more 
mature of the two. 4 All right, all right,’ he said rapidly 
and with feeling 1 1 promise to take care of myself. Yes ; 
I won’t take any risks. Not a single blessed risk. Of 
course not. I mean to hang out. Don’t you worry; Jove ! 
I feel as if nothing could touch me. Why! this is luck 
from the word Go. I wouldn’t spoil such a magnificent 
chance ! 9 . . .A magnificent chance! Well, it ivas mag¬ 
nificent, but chances are what men make them, and how 
was I to know. As he had said, even I — even I remem¬ 
bered — his — his misfortune against him. It was true. 
And the best thing for him was to go. 

« My gig had dropped in the wake of the brigantine, and 
( saw him aft detached upon the light of the westering sun, 
eaising his cap high above his head. I heard an indistinct 
shout, ‘ You — shall — hear — of — me.’ Of me, or from 
me, I don’t know which. I think it must have been of me. 
My eyes were too dazzled by the glitter of the sea below his 
feet to see him clearly; I am fated never to see him clearly; 


226 


LORD JIM 


but I can assure you no man could have appeared less ‘ in 
the similitude of a corpse/ as that half-caste croaker had 
put it. I could see the little wretch’s face, the shape and 
colour of a ripe pumpkin, poked out somewhere under Jim’s 
elbow. He too raised his arm as if for a downward thrust- 
Absit omen ! ” 


CHAPTER XXIV 

“ The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years after¬ 
wards) is straight and sombre, and faces a misty ocean, 
Red trails are seen like cataracts of rust streaming under 
the dark green foliage of bushes and creepers clothing the 
low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers, 
with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. 
In the offing a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, 
stand out in the everlasting sunlit haze like the remnants 
of a wall breached by the sea. 

“There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the 
Batu Kring branch of the estuary. The river, which had 
been closed so long, was open then, and Stein’s little 
schooner, in which I had my passage, worked her way up 
in three tides without being exposed to a fusilade from 
‘irresponsive parties.’ Such a state of affairs belonged 
already to ancient history, if I could believe the elderly 
headman of the fishing village, who came on board to act 
as a sort of pilot. He talked to me (the second white man 
he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his talk 
was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called 
him Tuan Jim, and the tone of his references was made 
remarkable by a strange mixture of familiarity and awe. 
They, in the village, were under that lord’s special protec¬ 
tion, which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If he hod 



LORD JIM 


227 


warned me that I would hear of him it was perfectly true. 
I was hearing of him. There was already a story that the 
tide had turned two hours before its time to help him on 
his journey up the river. The talkative old man himself 
had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the phenome¬ 
non. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son 
and his son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths 
without experience, who did not notice the speed of the 
canoe till he pointed out to them the amazing fact. 

“Jim’s coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but 
to them, as to many of us, the blessing came heralded by 
terrors. So many generations had been released since the 
last white man had visited the river that the very tradition 
had been lost. The appearance of the being that descended 
upon them and demanded inflexibly to be taken up to Patu 
san was discomposing; his insistence was alarming; liis 
generosity more than suspicious. It was an unheard-of 
request. There was no precedent. What would the Rajah 
say to this ? What would he do to them ? The best part 
of the night was spent in consultation; but the immediate 
risk from the anger of that strange man seemed so great 
ihat at last a cranky dug-out was got ready. The women 
shrieked with grief as it put off. A fearless old hag cursed 
the stranger. 

“He sat in it, as I’ve told you, on his tin box, nursing 
the unloaded revolver on his lap. He sat with precaution 
.— than which there is nothing more fatiguing — and thus 
entered the land he was destined to fill with the fame of 
his virtues, from the blue peaks inland to the white ribbon 
of surf on the coast. At the first bend he lost sight of the 
sea with its labouring waves for ever rising, sinking, and 
vanishing to rise again —the very image of struggling man¬ 
kind,_and faced the immovable forests rooted deep in 


228 


LORD JIM 


the soil, soaring towards the sunshine, everlasting in the 
shadowy might of their tradition, like life itself. And his 
.opportunity sat veiled by his side like an Eastern bride 
waiting to be uncovered by the hand of the master. He too 
was the heir of a shadowy and mighty tradition! He told 
me, however, that he had never in his life felt so depressed 
and tired as in that canoe. A.11 the movement he dared to 
allow himself was to reach, as it were by stealth, after the 
shell of half a cocoanut floating between his shoes, and bale 
some of the water out with a carefully restrained action. 
He discovered how hard the lid of a block-tin case was to 
sit upon. He had heroic health; but several times during 
that journey he experienced fits of giddiness, and between 
whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the 
sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by 
looking ahead to decide whether the muddy object he saw 
lying on the water’s edge was a log of wood or an alligator. 
Only very soon he had to give that up. No fun in it. 
Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and 
all but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over 
directly. Then in a long empty reach he was very grateful 
to a troop of monkeys who came right down on the bank 
and made an insulting hullabaloo on his passage. Such was 
the way in which he was approaching greatness as genuine 
as any man ever achieved. Principally, he longed for sun¬ 
set; and meantime his three paddlers were preparing to 
put into execution their plan of delivering him up to the 
Rajah. 

“‘I suppose I must have been stupid with fatigue, or 
perhaps I did doze off for a time,” he said. The first thing 
he knew was his canoe coming to the bank. He became 
instantaneously aware of the forest having been left behind, 
of the first houses being visible higher up, of a stockpile on 




LORD JIM 


229 


his left, and of his boatmen leaping out together upon a 
low point of land and taking to their heels. Instinctively 
he leaped out after them. At first he thought himself 
deserted for some inconceivable reason, but he heard excited 
shouts, a gate swung open, and a lot of people poured out, 
making towards him. At the same time a boat full of armed 
men appeared on the river and came alongside his empty 
canoe, thus shutting off his retreat. 

“ ‘ I was too startled to be quite cool — don’t you know ? 
and if that revolver had been loaded I would have shot 
somebody — perhaps two, three bodies, and that would have 
been the end of me. But it wasn’t. . . * Why not?’ I 

asked. ‘ Well, I couldn’t fight the whole population, and 
I wasn’t coming to them as if I were afraid of my life,’ he 
said, with just a faint hint of his stubborn sulkiness in the 
glance he gave me. I refrained from pointing out to him 
that they could not have known the chambers were actually 
empty. He had to satisfy himself in his own way. . . 

4 Anyhow it wasn’t,’ he repeated good-humouredly, ‘ and so 
I just stood still and asked them what was the matter. 
That seemed to strike them dumb. I saw some of these 
thieves going off with my box. That long-legged old scoun 
drel Kassim (I’ll show him to you to-morrow) ran out 
fussing to me about the Rajah wanting to see me. I said, 
“All right;” I too wanted to see the Rajah, and I simply 
walked in through the gate and — and — here I am.’ He^ 
laughed, and then with unexpected emphasis, ‘ And do you 
know what’s the best in it ? ’ he asked. ‘ I’ll tell you. It’s 
the knowledge that had I been wiped out it is this place 
that would have been the loser.’ 

“ He spoke thus to me before his house on that evening 
I’ve mentioned — after we had watched the moon float 
away above the chasm between the hills like an ascending 


230 


LORD JIM 


spirit out of a grave; its sheen descended, cold and pale^ 
like the ghost of dead sunlight. There is something 
haunting in the light of the moon; it nas all the dispassion 
ateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its incon- 
ceivable mystery. It is to our sunshine which — say what 
you like — is all we have to live by, what the echo is to 
the sound: misleading and confusing whether the note be 
mocking or sad. It robs all forms of matter — which, after 
all, is our domain — of their substance, and gives a sinister 
reality to shadows alone. And the shadows were very real 
around us, but Jim by my side looked very stalwart, as 
though nothing — not even the occult power of moonlight 
— could rob him of his reality in my eyes. Perhaps, 
indeed, nothing could touch him since he had survived the 
assault of the dark powers. All was silent, all was still; 
even on the river the moonbeams slept as on a pool. It 
was the moment of high water, a moment of immobility 
that accentuated the utter isolation of this lost corner of 
the earth. The houses crowding along the wide shining 
sweep without ripple or glitter, stepping into the water in 
a line of jostling, vague, grey, silvery forms mingled with 
black masses of shadow, were like a spectral herd of 
shapeless creatures pressing forward to drink in a spectral 
and lifeless stream. Here and there a red gleam twinkled 
within the bamboo walls, warm, like a living spark, signifi¬ 
cant of human affections, of shelter, of repose. 

“ He confessed to me that he often watched these tiny 
warm gleams go out one by one, that he loved to see people 
go to sleep under his eyes, confident in the security of to¬ 
morrow. ‘ Peaceful here, hey ? ’ he asked. He was not 
eloquent, but there was a deep meaning in the words that 
followed. 1 Look at these houses; there’s not one where I 
*m not trusted. Jove! I told you I would hang on. Ask 


LORD JIM 


231 


any man, woman, or child He paused. 1 Well, I am 

all right anyhow.’ 

“ I observed quickly that he had found that out in the 
end. I had been sure of it, I added. He shook his head. 
* Were you? ’ He pressed my arm lightly above the elbow. 
4 Well, then—you were right.’ 

“ There was elation and pride, there was awe almost, in 
that low exclamation. ‘ Jove!’ he cried, 4 only think what 
it is to me.’ Again he pressed my arm. * And you asked 
me whether I thought of leaving. Good God! I! want 
to leave! Especially now after what you told me of Mr. 
Stein’s . . . Leave! Why! That’s what I was afraid of. 
It would have been — it would have been harder than 
dying. No — on my word. Don’t laugh. I must feel — 
every day, every time I open my eyes — that I am trusted 
— that nobody has a right—don’t you know? Leave! 
For where ? What for ? To get what ? ’ 

“ I had told him (indeed it was the main object of my 
visit) that it was Stein’s intention to present him at once 
with the house and the stock of trading goods, on certain 
easy conditions which would make the transaction perfectly 
regular and valid. He began to snort and plunge at first. 
'Confound your delicacy!’ I shouted. ‘It isn’t Stein at 
rll. It’s giving you what you had made for yourself And 
in any case keep your remarks for M‘Neil — when you 
meet him in the other world. I hope it won’t happen 
soon. . . He had to give in to my arguments, because 
all his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the 
love, — all these things that made him master had made 
him a captive too. He looked with an owner’s eye at the 
peace of the evening, at the river, at the Houses, at the ever¬ 
lasting life of the forests, at the life of the old mankind, at 
the secrets of the land, at the pride of his own heart; but 


232 


LORD JIM 


it was they that possessed him and made him their own to 
the innermost thought, to the slightest stir of blood, to hia 
last breath. 

“ It was something to be proud of. I too was proud — 
for him, if not so certain of the fabulous value of the bar¬ 
gain. It was wonderful. It was not so much of his fear¬ 
lessness that I thought. It is strange how little account I 
took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to 
be at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by 
the other gifts he had displayed. He had proved his grasp 
of the unfamiliar situation, his intellectual alertness in that 
field of thought. There was his readiness too! Amazing. 
And all this had come to him in a manner like keen scent 
to a weLtbred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was 
a dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high 
seriousness in his stammerings. He had still his old trick 
of stubborn blushing. Now and then, though, a word, a 
sentence, would escape him that showed how deeply, how 
solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the 
certitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love 
the land and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a 
contemptuous tenderness.” 


CHAPTER XXY 

“ ‘ This is where I was prisoner for three days/ he mur 
mured to me (it was on the occasion of our visit to the 
Rajah), while we were making our way slowly through a 
kind of awestruck riot of dependants across Tunku Allang’s 
courtyard. ‘ Filthy place, isn’t it ? And I couldn’t get 
anything to eat, either, unless I made a row about it, and 
then it was only a small plate of rice and a fried fish not 



LORD JIM 


233 


much bigger than a stickleback — confound them ! Jove! 
Vve been hungry prowling inside this stinking enclosure 
with some of these vagabonds shoving their mugs right 
under my nose. I had given up that famous revolver of 
yours at the first demand. Glad to get rid of the bally 
thing. Look like a fool walking about with an empty 
shooting-iron in my hand.’ At that moment we came into 
the presence, and he became unflinchingly grave and com¬ 
plimentary with his late captor. Oh! magnificent! I want 
to laugh when I think of it. But I was impressed, too. 
The old, disreputable Tunku Allang could not help showing 
his fear (he was no hero, for all the tales of his hot youth 
iie was fond of telling), and at the same time there was 
a wistful confidence m his manner towards his late prisoner. 
Note l Even where he would be most hated he was still 
trusted. Jim— as far as I could follow the conversation 
—was improving the occasion by the delivery of a lecture. 
Some poor villagers had been waylaid and robbed while on 
their way to Doramin’s house with a few pieces of gum or 
bees’-wax which they wished to exchange for rice. ‘It 
was Doramin who was a thief/* burst out the Rajah. A 
shaking fury seemed to enter that old frail body. He 
writhed weirdly on his mat, gesticulating with his hands 
and feet, tossing the tangled strings of his mop — an impo¬ 
tent incarnation of rage. There were staring eyes and 
dropping jaws all around us. Jim began to speak. Reso¬ 
lutely, coolly, and for some time he enlarged upon the text 
that no man should be prevented from getting his food and 
his children’s food honestly. The other sat like a tailor at 
his board, one palm on each knee, his head low, and fixing Jim 
through the grey hair that fell over his very eyes. When 
Jim had done there was a great stillness. Nobody seeded 
to breathe even; no oh© made a sound till the old Rajak 



234 


LORD JIM 


sighed faintly, and looking up, with a toss of his head, said 
quickly, ‘You hear, my people! No more of these little 
games.’ This decree was received in profound silence. A 
rather heavy man, evidently in a position of confidence, 
with intelligent eyes, a bony, broad, very dark face, and a 
cheerily officious manner (I learned later on he was the 
executioner), presented to us two cups of coffee on a brass 
tray, which he took from the hands of an inferior attendant. 
‘ You needn’t drink/ muttered Jim very rapidly. I didn’t 
perceive the meaning at first, and only looked at him. He 
took a good sip and sat composedly, holding the saucer in 
his left hand. In a moment I felt excessively annoyed. 
‘ Why the devil/ I whispered, smiling at him amiably, ‘ do 
you expose me to such a stupid risk ? ’ I drank, of course, 
there was nothing for it, while he gave no sign, and almost, 
immediately afterwards we took our leave. While we were 
going down the courtyard to our boat, escorted by the intelli¬ 
gent and cheery executioner, Jim said he was very sorry. 
It was the barest chance, of course. Personally, he thought 
nothing of poison. The remotest chance. He was — he 
assured me — considered to be infinitely more useful than 
dangerous, and so . . . ‘But the Rajah is afraid of you 
abominably. Anybody can see that/ I argued with, I own, 
a certain peevishness, and all the time watching anxiously 
for the first twist of some sort of ghastly colic. I was 
awfully disgusted. ‘ If I am to do any good here and pre¬ 
serve my position/ he said, taking his seat by my side in the 
boat, ‘ I must stand the risk : I take it once every month, at 
least. Many people trust me to do that—for them. Afraid 
of me. That’s just it. Most likely he is afraid of me because 
I am not afraid of his coffee.’ Then showing me a place on 
the north front of the stockade where the pointed tops of 
teveral stakes were broken. ‘ This is where I leaped ovei 


LORD JIM 


235 


on my third day in Patusan. They haven’t put new stakes 
there yet. Good leap, eh?’ A moment later we passed 
the mouth of a muddy creek. 1 This is my second leap. 
I had a bit of a run and took this one flying, but fell short. 
Thought I would leave my skin there. Lost my shoes 
struggling. And all the time I was thinking to myself 
how beastly it would be to get a jab with a bally long spear 
while sticking in the mud like this. I remember how sick 
I felt wriggling in that slime. I mean really sick — as if I 
had bitten something rotten.’ 

" That’s how it was — and the opportunity ran by his side, 
leaped over the gap, floundered in the mud . . . still veiled. 
The unexpectedness of his coming was the only thing, you 
understand, that saved him from being at once despatched 
with krises and flung into the river. They had him, but it 
was like getting hold of an apparition, a wraith, a portent. 
What did it mean ? What to do with it ? Was it too late 
to conciliate him ? Hadn’t he better be killed without 
more delay? But what would happen then? Wretched 
old Allang went nearly mad with apprehension and through 
the difficulty of making up liis mind. Several times the 
council was broken up, and the advisers made a break 
helter-skelter for the door and out on to the verandah. One 
.— it is said — even jumped down to the ground — fifteen 
feet, I should judge — and broke his leg. The royal 
governor of Patusan had bizarre mannerisms, and one of 
them was to introduce boastful rhapsodies into every 
arduous discussion, when, getting gradually excited, he 
would end by flying off his perch with a kris in his hand. 
But, barring such interruptions, the deliberations upon 
Jim’s fate went on night and day. 

“ Meanwhile he wandered about the courtyard, shunned 
by some, glared at by others, but watched by all, and prao- 



236 


LORD JIM 


tically at the mercy of the first casual ragamuffin with s 
chopper, in there. He took possession of a small tumble* 
down shed to sleep in; the effluvia of filth and rotten 
matter incommoded him greatly: it seems he had not lost 
his appetite though, because — he told me — he had been 
hungry all the blessed time. How and again ‘ some fussy 
ass ’ deputed from the council-room would come out running 
to him, and in honeyed tones would administer amazing 
interrogatories. ‘Were the Dutch coming to take the 
country ? Would the white man like to go back down the 
river ? What was the object of coming to such a miserable 
country ? The Rajah wanted to know whether the white 
man could repair a watch ? ’ They did actually bring out to 
him a nickel clock of Hew England make, and out of sheer 
unbearable boredom he busied himself in trying to get the 
alarum to work. It was apparently when thus occupied in 
his shed that the true perception of his extreme peril 
dawned upon him. He dropped the thing — he says — ‘ like 
a hot potato,’ and walked out hastily, without the slightest 
idea of what he would, or indeed could, do. He only knew 
that the position was intolerable. He strolled aimlessly 
beyond a sort of ramshackle little granary on posts, and his 
eyes fell on the broken stakes of the palisade; and then — 
he says — at once, without any mental process as it were, 
without any stir of emotion, he set about liis escape as if 
executing a plan matured for a month. He walked off care¬ 
lessly to give himself a good run, and when he faced about 
there was some dignitary with two spearmen in attendance 
close at his elbow ready with a question. He started off 
‘from under his very nose,’ went over ‘like a bird,’ and 
landed on the other side with a fall that jarred all his 
bones and seemed to split his head. He picked himself up 
instantly He never thought of anything at the time; aU 


LORD JIM 


237 


he could remember — lie said — was a great yell; the first 
houses of Patusan were before him four hundred yards away; 
he saw the creek, and as it were, mechanically put on more 
pace. The earth seemed fairly to fly backwards under his 
feet. He took off from the last dry spot, felt himself flying 
through the air, felt himself, without any shock, planted up¬ 
right in an extremely soft and sticky mudbank. It was only 
when he tried to move his legs and found he couldn’t, that, 
m his own words , ( he came to himself/ He began to think 
of the * bally long spears/ Asa matter of fact, considering 
that the people inside the stockade had to run to the gate, 
then get down to the landing-place, get into boats, and pull 
round a point of land, he had more advance than he 
imagined. Besides, it being low water, the creek was with, 
out water — you couldn’t call it dry, — and practically he 
was safe for a time from everything but a very long shot 
perhaps. The higher firm ground was about six feet in 
front of him. 1 1 thought I would have to die there all the 
same,’ he said. He reached and grabbed desperately with 
his hands, and only succeeded in gathering a horrible, cold, 
shiny heap of slime against his breast — up to his very 
chin. It seemed to him he was burying himself alive, and 
then he struck out madly, scattering the mud with his fists 
It fell on his head, on his face, over his eyes, into his 
mouth. He told me that he remembered suddenly the 
courtyard, as you remember a place where you had been 
very happy years ago. He longed — so he said — to be 
back there again, mending the clock. Mending the clock 
— that was the idea. He made efforts, tremendous sobbing, 
gasping efforts, efforts that seemed to burst his eyeballs in 
their sockets and make him blind, and culminating into one 
mighty supreme effort m the darkness to crack the earth 
asunder, to throw it off his limbs — and he felt himseP 




238 


LORD JIM 


creeping feebly up the bank. He lay full length on the 
firm ground and saw the light, the sky. Then, as a sort of 
happy thought, the notion came to him that he would go to 
sleep. He will have it that he did actually go to sleep j 
that he slept — perhaps for a minute, perhaps for twenty 
seconds, or only for one second, but he recollects distinctly 
the violent convulsive start of awakening. He remained 
lying still for a while and then he arose muddy from head 
to foot and stood there, thinking he was alone of his kind 
for hundreds of miles, alone, with no help, no sympathy, 
no pity to expect from any one, like a hunted animal. The 
first houses were not more than twenty yards from him; 
and it was the desperate screaming of a frightened woman 
trying to carry off a child that started him again. He 
pelted straight on in his socks, beplastered with filth out of 
all semblance to a human being. He traversed more than 
half the length of the settlement. The nimbler women fled 
right and left, the slower men just dropped whatever they 
had in their hands, and remained petrified with dropping 
jaws. He was a flying terror. He says he noticed the 
little children trying to run for life, falling on their little 
stomachs and kicking. He swerved between two houses 
up a slope, clambered in desperation over a barricade of 
felled trees (there wasn’t a week without some fight in 
Patusan at that time), burst through a fence into a maize- 
patch, where a scared boy flung a stick at him, blundered 
upon a path, and ran all at once into the arms of several 
startled men. He just had breath enough to gasp out, 
* Doramin! Doramin! ’ He remembers being half-carried, 
half-rushed to the top of the slope, and in a vast enclosure 
with palms and fruit-trees being run up to a large man 
sitting massively in a chair in the midst of the greatest 
possible commotion and excitement. He fumbled in mud 


LORD JIM 


239 


and clothes to produce the ring, and, finding nimself sud¬ 
denly on his back, wondered who had knocked him down. 
They had simply let him go — don’t you know ? — but he 
couldn’t stand. At the foot of the slope random shots were 
fired, and above the roofs of the settlement there rose a 
dull roar of amazement. But he was safe. Doramin’s 
people were barricading the gate and pouring water down 
his throat; Doramin’s old wife, full of business and com¬ 
miseration, was issuing shrill orders to her girls. * The old 
woman,’ he said softly, ‘ made a to-do over me as if I had 
been her own son. They put me into an immense bed — 
her state bed — and she ran in and out wiping her eyes to 
give me pats on the back. I must have been a pitiful 
object. I just lay there like a log for I don’t know how 
long.’ 

“He seemed to have a great liking for Doramin’s old 
wife. She, on her side, had taken a motherly fancy to him 
She had a round, nut-brown, soft face, all fine wrinkles, 
large, bright red lips (she chewed betel assiduously), and 
screwed-up, winking, benevolent eyes. She was constantly 
in movement, scolding busily and ordering unceasingly a 
troop of young women with clear brown faces and big grave 
eyes, her daughters, her servants, her slave-girls. You know 
how it is in these households: it’s generally impossible to 
tell the difference. She was very spare, and even her ample 
outer garment, fastened in front with jewelled clasps, had 
somehow a skimpy effect. Her dark bare feet were thrust 
into yellow straw slippers of Chinese make. I have seen 
her myself flitting about with her extremely thick, long, 
grey hair falling about her shoulders. She uttered homely 
shrewd sayings, was of noble birth, and was eccentric and 
arbitrary. In the afternoon she would sit in a very roomy 
armchair, opposite her husband, gazing steadily through a 



240 


LORD JIM 


wide opening in the wall which gave an extensive viev oi 
the settlement and the river. 

“ She invariably tucked up her feet under her, but old 
Doramin sat squarely, sat imposingly as a mountain sits on 
a plain. He was only of the nakhoda , or merchant, class, 
but the respect shown to him and the dignity of his bear* 
ing were very striking. He was the chief of the second 
power in Patusan. The immigrants from Celebes (about 
sixty families that, with dependants and so on could mus 
ter some two hundred men ‘ wearing the kris ’) had elected 
him years ago for their head. The men of that race are 
intelligent, enterprising, revengeful, but with a more frank 
courage than the other Malays, and restless under oppres* 
sion. They formed the party opposed to the Rajah. Of 
course, the quarrels were for trade. This was the primary 
cause of faction fights, of the sudden outbreaks that would 
fill this or that part of the settlement with smoke, flame, 
the noise of shots, and shrieks. Villages were burnt, men 
were dragged into the Rajah’s stockade to be killed or tor¬ 
tured for the crime of trading with anybody else but him 
self. Only a day or two before Jim’s arrival several heads of 
households in the very fishing village that was afterwards 
taken under his especial protection had been driven over 
the cliffs by a party of the Rajah’s spearmen, on suspicion 
of having been collecting edible birds’ nests for a Celebes 
trader. Rajah Allang pretended to be the only trader in 
his country, and the penalty for the breach of the monopoly 
was death; but his idea of trading was indistinguishable 
from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and 
rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and ha 
was afraid of the organised-power of the Celebes men, only 
— till Jim came — he was not afraid enough to keep quiet 
He struck at them through his subjects, and though! 


LORD JIM 


241 


himself pathetically in the right. The situation was cornpli* 
cated by a wandering stranger, an Arab half-breed, who, I 
believe, on purely religious grounds, had incited the tribes 
mi the interior (the bush-folk, as Jim himself called them) 
to rise, and had established himself in a fortified camp on 
the summit of one of the twin hills. He hung over the 
town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he 
devastated the open country. Whole villages, deserted, 
rotted on their blackened posts over the banks of clear 
streams, dropping piecemeal into the water the grass of 
their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a curious effect 
of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation 
stricken by a blight at its very root. The two parties in 
Patusan were not sure which one this partisan most desired 
to plunder. The Rajah intrigued with him feebly. Some 
of the Bugis settlers, weary with endless insecurity, were 
half inclined to call him in. The younger spirits amongst 
them, chaffing, advised to ‘ get Sherif Ali with his wild men 
and drive the Rajah Allang out of the country.’ Doramin 
restrained them with difficulty. He Avas growing old, and 
though his influence had not diminished, the situation was 
getting beyond him. This was the state of affairs when 
Jim, bolting from the Rajah’s stockade, appeared before the 
chief of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in 
a manner of speaking, into the heart of the comm uni ty.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 

« Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of hi a 
race I had ever seen. His bulk for a Malay was immense, 
but he did not look merely fat; he looked imposing, monu¬ 
mental. This motionless body clad in rich stuffs, coloured 






242 


LORD JIM 


silks, gold embroideries; this huge head, enfolded in a 
red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big, round face, wrin¬ 
kled, furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds starting 
on each side of wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a thick- 
lipped mouth; the throat like a bull; the vast corrugated 
brow overhanging the staring proud eyes, — made a whole 
that, once seen, can never be forgotten. His impassive 
repose (he seldom stirred a limb when once he sat down) 
was like a display of dignity. He was never known to 
raise his voice. It was a hoarse and powerful murmur, 
slightly veiled as if heard from a distance. When he 
walked, two short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the 
waist, in white sarongs and with black skull-caps on the 
backs of their heads, sustained his elbows: they would 
ease him down and stand behind his chair till he wanted 
to rise, when he would turn his head slowly, as if with 
difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would 
catch him under his armpits and help him up. For all 
that, there was nothing of a cripple about him: on the 
contrary, all his ponderous movements were like mani¬ 
festations of a mighty deliberate force. It was generally 
believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs; but 
nobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange 
a single word. When they sat in state by the wide open¬ 
ing it was in silence. They could see below them in the 
declining light the vast expanse of the forest country, a 
dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating as far as 
the violet and purple range of mountains; the shining 
sinuosity of the river like an immense letter S of beaten 
silver; the brown ribbon of houses following the sweep of 
both banks, overtopped by the twin-hills uprising above 
the nearer tree-tops. They were wonderfully contrasted: 
she, light, delicate, spare, quick, a little witch-like, with 9 


LOKD JIM 


245 


touch of motherly fussiness in her repose; he, facing her, 
immense and heavy, like a figure of a man roughly fash¬ 
ioned of stone, with something magnanimous and ruthless 
in his immobility. The son of these old people was a most 
distinguished youth. 

“ They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really 
so young as he looked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so 
young when a man is already father of a family at eigh¬ 
teen. When he entered the large room, lined and car¬ 
peted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of white 
sheeting, where the couple sat in state surrounded by a 
most deferential retinue, he would make his way straight 
to Doramin, to kiss his hand — which the other abandoned 
to him, majestically — and then would step across to stand 
by his mother’s chair. I suppose I may say they idolised 
him, but I never caught them giving him an overt glance. 
Those, it is true, were public functions. The room was 
generally thronged. The solemn formality of greetings and 
leave-takings, the profound respect expressed in gestures, 
on the faces, in the low whispers, is simply indescribable. 
‘ It’s well worth seeing,’ Jim had assured me while we 
were crossing the river, on our way back. ‘They are like 
people in a book, aren’t they ? ’ he said triumphantly. 
‘ And Dain Waris — their son — is the best friend (barring 
you) I ever had. What Mr. Stein would call a good “ war- 
comrade.” I was in luck. Jove! I was in luck when I 
tumbled amongst them at my last gasp.’ He meditated 
with bowed head, then rousing himself he added — 

“ ‘ Of course I didn’t go to sleep over it, but . . . 9 He 
paused again. ‘It seemed to come to me,’ he murmured. 
‘ All at once I saw what I had to do ... 9 

“There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it 
had come through war, too, as is natural, since this powet 





244 


LORD JIM 


that came to him was the power to make peace. It is in 
this sense alone that might so often is right. You must 
not think he had seen his way at once. When he arrived 
the Bugis community was in a most critical position. ( They 
were all afraid/ he said to me — ‘ each man afraid for him¬ 
self ; while I could see as plain as possible that they must 
do something at once if they did not want to go under one 
after another, what between the Rajah and that vagabond 
Sherif.’ But to see that was nothing. When he got his 
idea he had to drive it into reluctant minds, through the 
bulwarks of fear, of selfishness. He drove it in at last. 
And that was nothing. He .had to devise the means. He 
devised them — an audacious plan; and his task was only 
half done. He had to inspire with his own confidence a 
lot of people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang 
back; he had to conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue 
away all sorts of senseless mistrusts. Without the weight 
of Doramin’s authority and his son’s fiery enthusiasm he 
would have failed. Dain Waris, the distinguished youth, 
was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of these 
strange, profound, rare friendships between brown and 
white, in which the very difference of race seems to draw 
two human beings closer by some mystic element of sym¬ 
pathy. Of Dain Waris, his own people said with pride that 
he knew how to fight like a white man. This was true; he 
had that sort of courage — the courage in the open, I may 
say, — but he had also a European mind. You meet them 
sometimes like that, and are surprised to discover unex¬ 
pectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision, 
a tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, 
but admirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud 
carriage, a polished, easy bearing, a temperament like a 
clear flame. His dusky face, with big black eyes, was in 


LORD JIM 


S45 


action expressive, and in repose, thoughtful. He was of a 
silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic smile, a courteous 
deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great reserves of 
intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western 
eye, so often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden 
possibilities of races and lands over which hangs the mys¬ 
tery of unrecorded ages. Pie not only trusted Jim, he 
understood him, I firmly believe. I speak of him because 
he had captivated me. His — if I may say so — his caustic 
placidity, and, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy 
with Jim’s aspirations, appealed to me. I seemed to behold 
the very origin of friendship. If Jim took the lead, the 
other had captivated his leader. In fact, Jim the leader 
was a captive in every sense. The land, the people, the 
friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his 
body. Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange 
freedom. I felt convinced of it, as from day to day I 
learned more of the story. 

“ The story ! Haven’t I heard the story ? I’ve heard it 
on the march, in camp (he made me scour the country after 
invisible game) ; I’ve listened to a good part of it on one of 
the twin-summits, after climbing the last hundred feet or 
so on my hands and knees. Our escort (we had volunteer 
followers from village to village) had camped meantime on 
a bit of level ground half-way up the slope, and in the still 
breathless evening the smell of wood-smoke reached our 
nostrils from below with the penetrating delicacy of some 
choice scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their dis¬ 
tinct and immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a 
felled tree, and pulling out his pipe began to smoke. A 
new growth of grass and bushes was springing up; there 
were traces of an earthwork under a mass of thorny twigs. 
< It all started from here,’ he said, after a long and meditar 




246 


LORD JIM 


tive silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across 
a sombre precipice, I saw a line of high, blackened stakes, 
showing here and there ruinously — the remnants of Sherif 
Ali’s impregnable camp. 

“ But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. 
He had mounted Doramin’s old ordnance on the top of that 
hill; two rusty iron 7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon 
— currency cannon. But if the brass guns represent wealth, 
they can also, when crammed recklessly to the muzzle, send 
a solid shot to some little distance. The thing was to get 
them up there. He showed me where he had fastened the 
cables, explained how he had improvised a rude capstan out 
of a hollowed log turning upon a pointed stake, indicated 
with the bowl of his pipe the outline of the earthwork. The 
last hundred feet of the ascent had been the most difficult 
He had made himself responsible for success on his own 
head. He had induced the war party to work hard all 
night. Big fires lighted at intervals blazed all down the 
slope, ‘ but up here/ he explained, ‘ the hoisting gang had 
to fly around in the dark.’ From the top he saw men mov¬ 
ing on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on that 
night had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a 
squirrel, directing, encouraging, watching all along the line. 
Old Doramin had himself carried up the hill in his arm¬ 
chair. They put him down on the level place upon the 
slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the big fires 
‘ amazing old chap — real old chieftain/ said Jim, ‘ with his 
little fierce eyes — a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his 
knees. Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with 
beautiful locks and a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A 
present from Stein, it seems — in exchange for that ring, 
you know. Used to belong to good old M‘Neil. God only 
knows how he came by them. There he sat, moving neither 


LORD JIM 


247 


hand nor foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and 
lots of people rushing about, shouting and pulling round 
him — the most solemn, imposing old chap you can imag¬ 
ine. He wouldn’t have had much chance if Sherif Ali had 
let his infernal crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. 
Eh ? Anyhow, he had come up there to die if anything 
went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It thrilled me to see him 
there — like a rock. But the Sherif must have thought 
us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got 
on. Nobody believed it could be done. Why! I think 
the very chaps who pulled and shoved and sweated over it 
did not believe it could be done! Upon my word I don’t 
think they did. . . .’ 

“He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his 
clutch, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish 
eyes. I sat on the stump of a tree at his feet, and below 
us stretched the land, the great expanse of the forests, 
sombre under the sunshine, rolling like a sea, with glints of 
winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and here and 
there a clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark 
waves of continuous tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over 
this vast and monotonous landscape ; the light fell on it as 
if into an abyss. The land devoured the sunshine; only 
far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and 
polished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky 
in a wall of steel. 

“ And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the 
top of that historic hill of his. He dominated the forest, 
the secular gloom, the old mankind. He was like a figure 
set up on a pedestal, to represent in his persistent youth 
the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that never 
grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I don’t 
know why he should always have appeared to me symbolic. 


248 


LORD JIM 


Perhaps this is the real cause of my interest in his fate. 1 
don’t know whether it was exactly fair to him to remembei 
the incident which had given a new direction to his life, 
but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly. 
It was like a shadow in the light.” 


CHAPTER XXYII 

“ Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural 
powers. Yes, it was said, there had been many ropes cun¬ 
ningly disposed, and a strange contrivance that turned by 
the efforts of many men, and each gun went up tearing 
slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way 
in the undergrowth, but, . . . and the wisest shook their 
heads. There was something occult in all this, no doubt; 
for what is the strength of ropes and of men’s arms ? 
There is a rebellious soul in things which must be over¬ 
come by powerful charms and incantations. Thus old Sura 
•— a very respectable householder of Patusan — with whom 
I had a quiet chat one evening. However, Sura was a 
professional sorcerer also, who attended all the rice sowings 
and reapings for miles around for the purpose of subduing 
the stubborn soul of things. This occupation he seemed to 
think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things 
are more stubborn than the souls of men. As to the sim¬ 
ple folk of outlying villages, they believed and said (as the 
most natural thing in the world) that Jim had carried the 
guns up the hill on his back — two at a time. 

“This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and 
exclaim with an exasperated little laugh, ‘What can you 
do with such silly beggars ? They will sit up half the 
night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie the more 



LOKD JIM 


249 


they seem to like it.* You could trace the subtle influence 
of his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of his 
captivity. The earnestness of his denials was amusing, 
and at last I said, ‘ My dear fellow, you don’t suppose 1 
believe this.’ He looked at me quite startled. ‘ Well, no! 
I suppose not,’ he said, and burst into a Homeric peal of 
laughter. ‘Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went 
off all together at sunrise. Jove! You should have seen 
the splinters fly,’ he cried. By his side Dain Waris, listen¬ 
ing with a quiet smile, dropped his eyelids and shuffled his 
feet a little. It appears that the success in mounting the 
guns had given Jim’s people such a feeling of confidence 
that he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two 
elderly Bugis who had seen some fighting in their day, and 
went to join Dain Waris and the storming-party who were 
concealed in the ravine. In the small hours they began 
creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in 
the wet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which 
was the agreed signal. He told me with what impatient 
anguishing emotion he watched the swift coming of the 
dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing, he 
felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he 
was he would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before 
the time came for the advance. ‘ It was the slowest half- 
hour in my life,’ he declared. Gradually the silent stock¬ 
ade came out on the sky above him. Men scattered all 
down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones 
and dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying flattened by 
his side. ‘We looked at each other,’Jim said, resting a 
gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘He smiled at me 
as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir my lips for 
fear I would break out into a shivering fit. ’Pon my word, 
it’s true ! I had been streaming with perspiration when we 


250 


LORD JIM 


took cover — so you may imagine . . He declared, and 
I believe him, that he had no fears as to the result. He 
was only anxious as to his ability to repress these shivers. 
He didn’t bother about the result. He was bound to get 
to the top of that hill and stay there, whatever might 
happen. There could be no going back for him. Those 
people had trusted him implicitly. Him alone! His bare 
word. . . . 

“ I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes 
fixed upon me. ‘ As far as he knew, they never had an 
occasion to regret it yet,’ he said. ‘Never. He hoped to 
God they never would. Meantime — worse luck! — they 
had got into the habit of taking his word for anything 
and everything. I could have no idea! Why? Only the 
other day an old fool he had never seen in his life came 
from some village miles away to find out if he should 
divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That’s the sort 
of thing . . . He wouldn’t have believed it. Would I? 
Squatted on the verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and 
spitting all over the place for more than an hour, and as 
glum as an undertaker before he came ouc with that dashed 
conundrum. That’s the kind of thing that isn’t so funny 
as it looks. What was a fellow to say ? — Good wife ? —- 
Yes. Good wife — old, though; started a confounded long 
story about some brass pots. Been living together for 
fifteen years — twenty years — could not tell. A long, 
long time. Good wife. Beat her a little — not much — 
just a little, when she was young. Had to — for the sake 
of his honour. Suddenly in her old age she goes and lends 
three brass pots to her sister’s son’s wife, and begins to 
abuse him every day in a loud voice. His enemies jeered 
at him; his face was utterly blackened. Pots totally lost 
Awfully cut up about it. Impossible to fathom a story 


LORD JIM 


251 


like that; told him to go home, and promised to come along 
myself and settle it all. It’s all very well to grin, but it 
was the dashedest nuisance! A day’s journey through the 
forest, another day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers 
to get at the rights of the affair. There was the making 
of a sanguinary shindy in the thing. Every bally idiot 
took sides with one family or the other, and one-half of 
the village was ready to go for the other half with any¬ 
thing that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . 
Instead of attending to their bally crops. Got him the 
inferiial pots back of course — and pacified all hands. No 
trouble to settle it. Of course not. Could settle the dead¬ 
liest quarrel in the country by crooking his little finger. 
The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not 
sure to this day whether he had been fair to all the parties. 
It worried him. And the talk! Jove! There didn’t seem 
to be any head or tail to it. Bather storm a twenty-foot- 
high old stockade any day. Much! Child’s play to that 
other job. Wouldn’t take so long, either. Well, yes; a 
funny set out, upon the whole — the fool looked old enough 
to be his grandfather. But from another point of view it 
was no joke. His word decided everything — ever since 
the smashing of Sherif Ali. An awful responsibility,’ he 
repeated. ‘No, really — joking apart, had it been three 
Jives instead of three rotten brass pots it would have been 
i the same. . . 9 

“Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in 
war. It was in truth immense. It had led him from strife 
to peace, and through death into the innermost life of the 
people 3 but the gloom of the land spread out under the 
sunshine preserved its appearance of inscrutable, of secular 
repose. The sound of his fresh young voice (it’s extraordi¬ 
nary how very few signs of wear he showed) floated lightly, 



252 


LORD JIM 


and passed away over the unchanged face of the forests like 
the sound of the big guns on that cold dewy morning when 
he had no other concern on earth but the proper control of 
the chills in his body. With the first slant of sun-rays 
along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill 
wreathed itself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of 
smoke, and the other burst into an amazing noise of yells, 
war-cries, shouts of anger, of surprise, of dismay. Jim 
and Dain Waris were the first to lay their hands on the 
stakes. The popular story has it that Jim with a touch of 
one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, 
anxious to disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade 
— he would insist on explaining to you — was a poor affair 
(Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the inaccessible position); 
and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked to pieces 
and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder 
to it like a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! 
If it hadn’t been for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed 
vagabond would have pinned him with his spear to a baulk 
of timber like one of Stein’s beetles. The third man in, it 
seems, had been Tamb’ Itam, Jim’s own servant. This was 
a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into 
Patusan, and had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang 
as paddler of one of the state boats. He had made a bolt of 
it at the first opportunity, and finding a precarious refuge 
(but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis settlers, had 
attached himself to Jim’s person. His complexion was 
very dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected 
with bile. There was something excessive, almost fanatical, 
in his devotion to his 1 white lord.’ He was inseparable 
from Jim, like a morose shadow. On state occasions he 
would tread on his master’s heels, one hand on the haft of 
his kris, keeping common people at a distance by his truculent 



LOKD JIM 


255 


brooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his 
establishment, and all Patusan respected and courted him as 
a person of much influence. At the taking of the stockade 
he had distinguished himself greatly by the methodical 
ferocity of his fighting. The storming-party had coic°, on so 
quick — Jim said — that notwithstanding the panic or the 
garrison, there was a 1 hot five minutes’ hand-to-hand inside 
that stockade, till some bally ass set fire to the shelters of 
boughs and dry grass, and we all had to clear out for dear 
life.’ 

“ The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin wait¬ 
ing immovably in his chair on the hillside, with the smoke 
of the guns spreading slowly above his big head, received 
the news with a deep grunt. When informed that his son 
was safe and leading the pursuit he, without another sound, 
made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his 
help, and, held up reverentty, he shuffled with great dignity 
into a bit of shade, where he laid himself down to sleep 
covered entirely with a piece of white sheeting. In Patusan 
the excitement was intense. Jim told me that from the 
hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers, black 
ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after 
time the open spaces between the houses on both sides of 
the stream fill suddenly with a seething rush of people and 
get empty in a moment. His ears caught feebly from below 
the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild shouts 
of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot 
of streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow 
birds amongst the brown ridges of roofs. ‘ You must have 
enjoyed it,’ I murmured, feeling the stir of sympathetic 
emotion. 

“ ‘ It was . . it was immense ! Immense! ’ he cried 
aloud, flinging his arms open. The sudden movement 



254 


LORD JIM 


startled me as though I had seen him bare the secrets of 
his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to the 
steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon 
the banks of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. 

* Immense !’ he repeated for a third time, speaking in a 
whisper, for himself alone. 

“Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of suc¬ 
cess upon his words, the conquered ground for the soles of 
his feet, the blind trust of men, the belief in himself 
snatched from the fire, the solitude of his achievement. 
All this, as Fve warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling. 
I can’t with mere words convey to you the impression of 
his total and utter isolation. I know, of course, he was in 
every sense alone of his kind there, but the unsuspected 
qualities of his nature had brought him in such close touch 
with his surroundings that this isolation seemed only the 
effect of his power. His loneliness added to his stature. 
There was nothing within sight to compare him with, as 
though he had been one of these exceptional men who can 
be only measured by the greatness of their fame; and his 
fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for many 
a day’s journey. You would have to paddle, pole, or track 
a long weary way through the jungle before you passed 
beyond the reach of its voice. Its voice was not the trum¬ 
peting of the disreputable goddess we all know — not blat¬ 
ant — not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness and 
gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the 
one truth of every passing day. It shared something of 
the nature of that silence through which it accompanied 
you into unexplored depths, heard continuously by your 
side, penetrating, far-reaching — tinged with wonder and 
mystery on the lips of whispering men.” 


LORD JIM 


255 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

“ The defeated Sherif Ali fled the country without mak¬ 
ing another stand, and when the miserable hunted villagers 
began to crawl out of the jungle back to their rotting 
houses, it was Jim who, in consultation with Dain Waris, 
appointed the headmen. Thus he became the virtual rule 
of the land. As to old Tunku Allang, his fears at first had 
known no bounds. It is said that at the intelligence of the 
successful storming of the hill he flung himself, face down, 
on the bamboo floor of his audience-hall, and lay motionless 
for a whole night and a whole day, uttering stifled sounds 
of such an appalling nature that no man dared approach 
his prostrate form nearer than a spear’s length. Already 
he could see himself driven ignominiously out of Patusan, 
wandering, abandoned, stripped, without opium, without 
his women, without followers, a fair game for the first 
comer to kill. After Sherif Ali his turn would come, and 
who could resist an attack led by such a devil ? And 
indeed he owed his life, and such authority as he still pos¬ 
sessed at the time of my visit, to Jim’s idea of what was 
fair alone. The Bugis had been extremely anxious to pay 
off old scores, and the impassive old Doramin cherished the 
hope of yet seeing his son ruler of Patusan. During one 
of our interviews he deliberately allowed me to get a 
glimpse of this secret ambition. Nothing could be finer 
in its way than the dignified wariness of his approaches. 
He himself — he began by declaring — had used his strength 
m his young days, but now he had grown old and tired. 
. . . With his imposing bulk and haughty little eyes dart 
ing sagacious, inquisitive glances, he reminded one irre¬ 
sistibly of a cunning old elephant; the slow rise and fall 




256 


LORD JIM 


of his vast breast went on powerful and regular, like the 
heave of a calm sea. He, too, as he protested, had an un¬ 
bounded confidence in Tuan Jim’s wisdom. If he could 
only obtain a promise ! One word would be enough! . . 

His breathing silences, the low rumblings of his voice, 
recalled the last efforts of a spent thunderstorm. 

“ I tried to put the subject aside. It was difficult, for 
there could be no question that Jim had the power; in 
his new sphere there did not seem to be anything that was 
not his to hold or to give. But that, I repeat, was nothing 
in comparison with the notion which occurred to me, while 
I listened with a show of attention, that he seemed to have 
come very near at last to mastering his fate. Doramin 
was anxious about the future of the country, and I was 
struck by the turn he gave to the argument. The land 
remains where God had put it, but white men — he said 
— they come to us and in a little while they go. They 
go away. Those they leave behind do not know when 
to look for their return. They go to their own land, to 
their people, and so this white man, too, would. ... I 
don’t know what induced me to commit myself at this 
point by a vigorous ‘No, no.’ The whole extent of this 
indiscretion became apparent when Doramin, turning full 
upon me his face, whose expression, fixed in rugged deep 
folds, remained unalterable, like a huge brown mask, 
said that this was good news indeed, reflectively; and 
then wanted to know why. 

“His little, motherly witch of a wife sat on my other 
hand with her head covered and her feet tucked up, 
gazing through the great shutter-hole. I could only see 
a straying lock of grey hair, a high cheek-bone, the slight 
masticating motion of the sharp chin. Without removing 
her eyes from the vast prospect of forests stretching as 


LORD JIM 


257 


far as the hills, she asked me in a pitying voice why was 
it that he so young had wandered from his home, coming 
so far, through so many dangers? Had he no household 
there, no kinsmen in his own country ? Had he no old 
mother, who would always remember his face? . . 

“I was completely unprepared for this. I could only 
mutter and shake my head vaguely. Afterwards I am 
perfectly aware I cut a very poor figure trying to extri¬ 
cate myself out of this difficulty. From that moment, 
however, the old nakhoda became taciturn. He was not 
very pleased, I fear, and evidently I had given him food 
for thought. Strangely enough, on the evening of that 
very day (which was my last in Patusan) I was once more 
confronted with the same question, with the unanswerable 
why of Jim’s fate. And this brings me to the story of his 
love. 

“ I suppose you think it is a story that you can imagine 
for yourselves. We have heard so many such stories, and 
the majority of us don’t believe them to be stories of love 
at all. For the most part we look upon them as stories of 
opportunities: episodes of passion at best, or perhaps only 
of youth and temptation, doomed to forgetfulness in the 
end, even if they pass through the reality of tenderness 
and regret. This view mostly is right, and perhaps in this 
case too. . . Yet I don’t know. To tell this story is by 
no means so easy as it should be — were the ordinary stand¬ 
point adequate. Apparently, it is a story very much like 
the others: for me, however, there is visible in its back¬ 
ground the melancholy figure of a woman, the shadow of a 
cruel wisdom buried in a lonely grave, looking on wistfully, 
helplessly, with sealed lips. The grave itself, as I came 
upon it during an early morning stroll, was a rather shape¬ 
less brown mound, with an inlaid neat border of whit# 


258 


LORD JIM 


lumps of coral at the base, and enclosed within a circulai 
fence made of split saplings, with the bark left on. A gar¬ 
land of leaves and flowers was woven about the heads of 
the slender posts — and the flowers were fresh. 

“ Thus, whether the shadow is of my imagination or not, 
I can at all events point out the significant fact of an unfor¬ 
gotten grave. When I tell you besides that Jim with his 
own hands had worked at the rustic fence, you will perceive 
directly the difference, the individual side of the story 
There is in his espousal of memory and affection belonging 
to another human being something characteristic of his 
seriousness. He had a conscience, and it was a romantic 
conscience. Through her whole life the wife of the un¬ 
speakable Cornelius had no other companion, confidant, and 
friend but her daughter. How the poor woman had come 
to marry the awful little Malacca Portuguese — after the 
separation from the father of her girl — and how that 
separation had been brought about, whether by death, which 
can be sometimes merciful, or by the merciless pressure of 
conventions, is a mystery to me. From the little which 
Stein (who knew so many stories) had let drop in my hear¬ 
ing, I am convinced that she was no ordinary woman. Her 
own father had been a white; a high official; one of the 
brilliantly endowed men who are not dull enough to nurse a 
success, and whose careers so often end under a cloud. 1 
suppose she too must have lacked the saving dulness — and 
her career ended in Patusan. Our common fate . . . for 
where is the man — I mean a real sentient man — who does 
not remember vaguely having been deserted in the fulness 
of possession by some one or something more precious than 
life ? . . . our common fate fastens upon the women with a 
peculiar cruelty. It does not punish like a master, but in¬ 
flicts lingering torment, as if to gratify a secret, unappeas 


LORD JIM 


259 


able spite. One would think that, appointed to rule on 
earth, it seeks to revenge itself upon the beings that come 
nearest to rising above the trammels of earthly caution; for 
it is only women who manage to put at times into their love 
an element just palpable enough to give one a fright — an 
extraterrestrial touch. I ask myself with wonder — how 
the world can look to them — whether it has the shape and 
substance we know, the air we breathe! Sometimes I fancy 
it must be a region of unreasonable sublimities seething with 
the excitement of their adventurous souls, lighted by the 
glory of all possible risks and renunciations. However, I 
suspect there are very few women in the world, though of 
course I am aware of the multitudes of mankind and of the 
equality of sexes in point of numbers — that is. But I am 
sure that the mother was as much of a woman as the 
daughter seemed to be. I cannot help picturing to myself 
these two, at first the young woman and the child, then the 
old woman and the young girl, the awful sameness and the 
swift passage of time, the barrier of forest, the solitude and 
the turmoil round these two lonely lives, and every word 
spoken between them penetrated with sad meaning. There 
must have been confidences, not so much of fact, I suppose, 
as of innermost feeling — regrets — fears — warnings, no 
doubt: warnings that the younger did not fully understand 
till the elder was dead — and Jim came along. Then I 
am sure she understood much — not everything — the fear 
mostly, it seems. Jim called her by a word that means 
precious, in the sense of a precious jem—jewel. Pretty, 
isn’t it ? But he was capable of anything. He was equal 
to his fortune, as he — after all — must have been equal to 
his misfortune. Jewel he called her; and he would say 
this as he might have said 1 Jane/ don’t you know, with a 
marital, homelike, peaceful effect. I heard the name for the 




260 


LORD JIM 


first time ten minutes after I had landed in his courtyard, 
when, after nearly shaking my arm off, he darted up the 
steps and began to make a joyous, boyish disturbance at the 
door under the heavy eaves. 1 Jewel! 0! Jewel. Quick! 
Here’s a friend come,’ . . . and suddenly peering at me in 
the dim verandah, he mumbled earnestly, ‘You know — 
this — no confounded nonsense about it — can’t tell you 
how much I owe to her — and so — you understand — I —• 
exactly as if ... ’ His hurried, anxious whispers were cut 
short by the flitting of a white form within the house, a 
faint exclamation, and a childlike but energetic little face 
with delicate features and a profound attentive glance 
peeped out of the inner gloom, like a bird out of the recess 
of a nest. I was struck by the name, of course; but it was 
not till later on that I connected it with an astonishing 
rumour that had met me on my journey, at a little place 
on the coast about 230 miles south of Patusan river. Stein’s 
schooner, in which I had my passage, put in there, to collect 
some produce, and going ashore, I found to my great sur^ 
prise that the wretched locality could boast of a third-class 
deputy-assistant resident, a big, fat, greasy, blinking fellow 
of mixed descent, with turned-out, shiny lips. I found him 
lying extended on his back in a cane chair, odiously unbut¬ 
toned, with a large green leaf of some sort on the top of his 
steaming head, and another in his hand which he used lazily 
as a fan. . . . Going to Patusan ? Oh, yes. Stein’s Trad¬ 
ing Company. He knew. Had a permission. No business 
of his. It was not so bad there now, he remarked negli¬ 
gently, and he went on drawling, ‘ there’s some sort of white 
vagabond had got in there, I hear. ... Eh? What you 
say ? Friend of yours ? So! . . . Then it was true there 
was one of these vordamte — What was he up to ? Found 
his way in. the rascal. Eh ? I had not been sure. Patusan 



LORD JIM 


261 


— they cutthroats there — no business of ours/ He inter¬ 
rupted himself to groan. ‘Phoo! Almighty! The heat! 
The heat! Well, then, there might be something in the 
story, too, after all, and . . . ’ He shut one of his beastly 
glassy eyes (the eyelid went on quivering), while he leered 
at me atrociously with the other. ‘Look here,’ says he 
mysteriously, ‘if—do you understand? — if he has really 
got hold of something fairly good — none of your bits of 
green glass — understand ? — I am a government official — 
you tell the rascal ... Eh ? What ? Friend of yours ? ’ 
. . He continued wallowing calmly in the chair . . . ‘ You 
said so; that’s just it; and I am pleased to give you the 
hint. I suppose you too would like to get something out of 
it ? Don’t interrupt. You just tell him I’ve heard the tale, 
but to my government I have made no report. Not yet. 
See ? Why make a report ? Eh ? Tell him to come to me 
if they let him get alive out of the country. He had better 
look out for himself. Eh ? I promise to ask no questions. 
On the quiet — you understand? You too — you shall get 
something from me. Small commission for the trouble. 
Don’t interrupt. I am a government official, and make no 
report. That’s business. Understand ? I know some good 
people that will buy anything worth having, and can give him 
more money than the scoundrel ever saw in his life. I know 
his sort.’ He fixed me steadfastly with both his eyes open, 
while I stood over him utterly amazed, and asking myself 
whether he was mad or drunk. He perspired, puffed, moan¬ 
ing feebly, and scratching himself with such horrible com • 
posure that I could not bear the sight long enough to find 
out. Next day, talking casually with the people of the 
little native court of the place, I discovered that a story 
was travelling slowly down the coast about a mysterious 
White man in Patusan who had got hold of an extraordinary 



262 


LORD JIM 


gem — namely, an emerald ol an enormous size, and alto 
gether priceless. The emerald seems to appeal more to the 
Eastern imagination than any other precious stone. The 
white man had obtained it, I was told, partly by the exer¬ 
cise of his wonderful strength and partly by cunning, from 
the ruler of a distant country, whence he had fled instantly, 
arriving in Patusan in utmost distress, but frightening the 
people by his extreme ferocity, which nothing seemed able 
to subdue. Most of my informants were of the opinion 
that the stone was probably unlucky — like the famous 
stone of the Sultan of Succadana, which in the old times 
had brought wars and untold calamities upon that country. 
Perhaps it was the same stone — one couldn’t say. Indeed 
the story of a fabulously large emerald is as old as the 
arrival of the first white men in the Archipelago; and the 
belief in it is so persistent that less than forty years ago 
^here had been an official Dutch inquiry into the truth of it. 
Such a jewel — it was explained to me by the old fellow 
from whom I heard most of this amazing Jim-myth — a 
sort of scribe to the wretched little Rajah of the place; — 
such a jewel, he said, cocking his poor purblind eyes up at 
me (he was sitting on the cabin floor out of respect), is best 
preserved by being concealed about the person of a woman. 
Yet it is not every woman that would do. She must be young 
— he sighed deeply — and insensible to the seductions of 
love. He shook his head sceptically. But such a woman 
seemed to be actually in existence. He had been told of a 
tall girl, whom the white man treated with great respect and 
care, and who never went forth from the house unattended. 
People said the white man could be seen with her almost 
any day; they walked side by side, openly, he holding her 
arm under his — pressed to his side — thus — in a most ex¬ 
traordinary way. This might be a lie, he conceded, for it 


LORD JIM 


263 


was indeed a strange thing for any one to do: on the other 
hand, there could be no doubt she wore the white man’s 
jewel concealed upon her bosom.” 


CHAPTER XXIX 

“This was the theory of Jim’s marital evening walks. I 
made a third on more than one occasion, unpleasantly aware 
^very time of Cornelius, who nursed the aggrieved sense of 
his legal paternity, slinking in the neighbourhood with 
that peculiar twist of his mouth as if he were perpetually 
on the point of gnashing his teeth. But do you notice how, 
three hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph cables and 
mail-boat lines, the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilisa¬ 
tion wither and die, to be replaced by pure exercises of 
imagination, that have the futility, often the charm, and 
sometimes the deep hidden truthfulness, of works of art ? 
Romance had singled Jim for its own—and that was the true 
part of the story, which otherwise was all wrong. He did 
not hide his jewel. In fact, he was extremely proud of it. 

“ It comes to me now that I had, on the whole, seen very 
little of her. What I remember best is the even, olive 
pallor of her complexion, and the intense blue-black gleams 
of her hair, flowing abundantly from under a small crimson 
cap she wore far back on her shapely head. Her move¬ 
ments were free, assured, and she blushed a dusky red. 
While Jim and I were talking, she would come and go with 
rapid glances at us, leaving on her passage an impression of 
grace and charm and a distinct suggestion of watchfulness. 
Her manner presented a curious combination of shyness and 
audacity. Every pretty smile was succeeded swiftly by a 
look of silent, repressed anxiety, as if put to flight by the 



264 


LOUD JIM 


I 


recollection of some abiding danger. At times she would 
sit down with us and, with her soft cheek dimpled by the 
knuckles of her little hand, she would listen to our talk; 
her big clear eyes would remain fastened on our lips, as 
though each pronounced word had a visible shape. Her 
mother had taught her to read and write; she had learned 
a good bit of English from Jim, and she spoke it most 
amusingly, with his own clipping, boyish intonation. Her 
tendernesr hovered over him like a flutter of wings. She 
lived so completely in his contemplation that she had 
acquired something of his outward aspect, something that 
recalled him in her movements, in the way she stretched 
her arm, turned her head, directed her glances. Her vigi¬ 
lant affection had an intensity that made it almost percep¬ 
tible to the senses; it seemed actually to exist in the ambient 
matter of space, to envelop him like a peculiar fragrance, to 
dwell in the sunshine like a tremulous, subdued, and impas¬ 
sioned note. I suppose you think that I too am romantic, but 
it is a mistake. I am relating to you the sober impressions 
of a bit of youth, of a strange uneasy romance that had come 
in my way. I observed with interest the work of his — 
well — good fortune. He was jealously loved, but why she 
should be jealous, and of what, I could not tell. The land, 
the people, the forests were her accomplices, guarding him 
with vigilant accord, with an air of seclusion, of mystery, 
of invincible possession. There was no appeal, as it were; 
he was imprisoned within the very freedom of his power, 
and she, though ready to make a footstool of her head for 
his feet, guarded her conquest inflexibly — as though he 
were hard to keep. The very Tamb’ Itam, marching on our 
journeys upon the heels of his white lord, with his head 
thrown back, truculent and be-weaponed like a janissary, 
with kris, chopper, and lance (besides carrying Jim’s gun)j 


LORD JIM 


265 


even Tamb’ Itam allowed himself to put on the airs of 
uncompromising guardianship, like a surly, devoted jailer 
ready to lay down his life for his captive. On the evenings 
when we sat up late his silent, indistinct form would pass 
and repass under the verandah, with noiseless footsteps, 
or lifting my head I would unexpectedly make him out 
standing rigidly erect in the shadow. As a general rule he 
would vanish after a time, without a sound; but when we 
rose he would spring up close to us as if from the ground, 
ready for any orders Jim might wish to give. The girl, too, 
I believe, never went to sleep till we had separated for the 
night- More than once I saw her and Jim through the 
window of my room come out together quietly and lean on 
the rough balustrade—two white forms very close, his arm 
about her waist, her head on his shoulder. Their soft 

murmurs reached me, penetrating, tender, with a calm, sad 
note in the stillness of the night, like a self-communion of 
one being carried on in two tones. Later on, tossing on my 
bed under the mosquito-net, I w T as sure to hear slight creak- 
ings, faint breathing, a throat cleared cautiously—and I 
would know that Tamb’ Itam was still on the prowl. 

Though he had (by the favour of the white lord) a house 
in the compound, had ‘ taken wife,* and had lately been 

blessed with a child, I believe that, during my stay at all 

events, he slept on the verandah every night. It was very 
difficult to make this faithful and grim retainer talk. Even 
Jim himself was answered in jerky short sentences, under 
protest, as it were. Talking, he seemed to imply, was no 
business of his. The longest speech I heard him volunteer 
was one morning when, suddenly extending his hand towards 
the courtyard, he pointed at Cornelius, and said, ‘Here comes 
the Nazarene.’ I don’t think he was addressing me, though 
I stood at his side; his object seemed rather to awaken the 



*66 


LORD JIM 


indignant attention of the universe. Some muttered allu. 
sions which followed, to dogs and the smell of roast meat, 
struck me as singularly felicitous. The courtyard, a large 
square space, was one torrid blaze of sunshine, and, bathed 
in intense light, Cornelius was creeping across in full view 
with an inexpressible effect of stealthiness, of dark and 
secret slinking. He reminded one of everything that is 
unsavoury. His slow, laborious walk resembled the creep¬ 
ing of a repulsive beetle, the legs alone moving with horrid 
industry while the body glided evenly. I suppose he made 
straight enough for the place where he wanted to get to, 
but his progress with one shoulder carried forward seemed 
oblique. He was often seen circling slowly amongst the 
sheds as if following a scent; passing before the verandah 
with upward stealthy glances; disappearing without haste 
round the corner of some hut. That he seemed free of the 
place demonstrated Jim’s absurd carelessness or else his 
infinite disdain, for Cornelius had played a very dubious 
part (to say the least of it) in a certain episode which 
might have ended fatally for Jim. As a matter of fact, it 
had redounded to his glory. But everything redounded to 
his glory; and it was the irony of his good fortune that he, 
who had been too careful of it once, seemed to bear a 
charmed life. 

“ You must know he had left Doramin’s place very soon 
after his arrival — much too soon, in fact, for his safety, 
and of course a long time before the war. In this he was 
actuated by a sense of duty; he had to look after Stein’s 
business, he said. Hadn’t he ? To that end, with an utter 
disregard of his personal safety, he crossed the river and 
took up his quarters with Cornelius. How the latter had 
managed to exist through the troubled times I can’t say. 
As Stein’s agent, after all, he must have had Doramin’s 




LORD JIM 


267 


protection in a measure; and in one way or another he had 
managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, 
while I have no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he 
was forced to take, was marked by that abjectness which 
was like the stamp of the man. That was his charac¬ 
teristic ; he was fundamentally and outwardly abject, as 
other men are markedly of a generous, distinguished, or 
venerable appearance. It was the element of his nature 
which permeated all his acts and passions and emotions; 
he raged abjectly, smiled abjectly, was abjectly sad; his 
civilities and his indignations were alike abject. I am 
sure his love would have been the most abject of his senti¬ 
ments, but can one imagine a loathsome insect in love. 
And his loathsomeness too was abject, so that a simply 
disgusting person would have appeared noble by his side. 
He has his place neither in the background nor in the 
foreground of the story; he is simply seen skulking on its 
outskirts, enigmatical and unclean, tainting the fragrance 
of its youth and of its naiveness. 

“His position, in any case, could not have been other 
than extremely miserable, yet it may very well be that 
he found some advantages in it. Jim told me he had been 
received at first with an abject display of the most ami¬ 
cable sentiments. ‘ The fellow apparently couldn’t contain 
himself for joy,’ said Jim with disgust. ‘He flew at me 
every morning to shake both my hands — confound him! 
but I could never tell whether there would be any break¬ 
fast. If I got three meals in two days I considered myself 
jolly lucky, and he made me sign a chit for ten dollars every 
week. Said he was sure Mr. Stein did not mean him to 
keep me for nothing. Well — he kept me on nothing as 
near as possible. Put it down to the unsettled state 
of the country, and made as if to tear his hair out, begging 



268 


LORD JIM 


my pardon twenty times a day, so that I had at last to 
entreat him not to worry. It made me sick. Half the 
roof of his house had fallen in, and the whole place had 
a mangy look, with wisps of dry grass sticking out and 
the corners of broken mats flapping on every wall. He 
did his best to make out that Mr. Stein owed him money 
on the last three years’ trading, but his books were all 
torn, and some were missing. He tried to hint it was his 
late wife’s fault. Disgusting scoundrel! Ac last I had to 
forbid him to mention his late wife at all. It made Jewel 
cry. I couldn’t discover what had become of all the trade- 
goods ; there was nothing in the store but rats, having a 
high old time amongst a litter of brown paper and old 
sacking. I was assured on every hand that he had a lot 
of money buried somewhere, but of course could get 
nothing out of him. It was the most miserable existence 
I led there in that wretched house. I tried to do my duty 
by Stein, but I had also other matters to think of. When 
I escaped to Doramin old Tunku Allang got frightened and 
returned all my things. It was done in a roundabout way, 
and with no end of mystery, through a Chinaman who 
keeps a small shop here; but as soon as I left the Bugis 
quarter and went to live with Cornelius it began to be said 
openly that the Rajah had made up his mind to have me 
killed before long. Pleasant, wasn’t it? And I couldn’t 
see what was there to prevent him if he really had made 
up his mind. The worst of it was I couldn’t help feeling 
I wasn’t doing any good either for Stein or for myself. 
Oh! it was beastly — the whole six weeks of it.’” 


LORD JIM 


269 


CHAPTER XXX 

“He told me further that he didn’t know what made him 
hang on — but of course we may guess. He sympathised 
deeply with the defenceless girl, at the mercy of that 
‘mean, cowardly scoundrel.’ It appears Cornelius led her 
an awful life, stopping only short of actual ill-usage, for 
which he had not the pluck, I suppose. He insisted upon 
her calling him father ■— ‘ and with respect too — with re¬ 
spect,’ he would scream, shaking a little yellow fist in her 
face. ‘ I am a respectable man, and what are you ? Tell 
me—what are you? You think I am going to bring up 
somebody else’s child and not be treated with respect? 
You ought to be glad I let you. Come — say Yes, father. 
. . . No? . . . You wait a bit.’ Thereupon he would 
begin to abuse the dead woman, till the girl would run off 
with her hands to her head. He pursued her, dashing in 
and out and round the house and amongst the sheds, would 
drive her into some corner, where she would fall on her 
knees stopping her ears, and then he would stand at a dis¬ 
tance and declaim filthy denunciations at her back for halt 
an hour at a stretch. ‘ Your mother was a devil, a deceitful 
devil — and you too are a devil,’ he would shriek in a final 
outburst, pick up a bit of dry earth or a handful of mud, 
(there was plenty of mud around the house), and fling it 
into her hair. Sometimes, though, she would hold out full 
of scorn, confronting him in silence, her face sombre and 
contracted, and only now and then uttering a word or two 
that would make the other jump and writhe with the sting. 
Jim told me these scenes were terrible. It was indeed a 
strange thing to come upon in a wilderness. The endless¬ 
ness of such a subtly cruel situation was appalling — i~ you 


270 


LORD JIM 


think of it. The respectable Cornelius (Inchi ’Nelyus, tht 
Malays called him, with a grimace that meant many things) 
was a much-disappointed man. I don’t know what he had 
expected would be done for him in consideration of his 
marriage; but evidently the liberty to steal, and embezzle, 
and appropriate to himself for many years and in any way 
that suited him best, the goods of Stein’s Trading Company 
(Stein kept the supply up unfalteringly as long as he could 
get his skippers to take it there) did not seem to him a fair 
equivalent for the sacrifice of his honourable name. Jim 
would have enjoyed exceedingly thrashing Cornelius within 
an inch of his life; on the other hand, the scenes were of 
so painful a character, so abominable, that his impulse 
would be to get out of earshot, in order to spare the girl’s 
feelings. They left her agitated, speechless, clutching her 
bosom now and then with a stony, desperate face, and then 
Jim would lounge up and say unhappily, ‘Now — come — 
really — what’s the use — you must try to eat a bit,’ or give 
some such mark of sympathy. Cornelius .would keep on 
slinking through the doorways, across the verandah and 
back again, as mute as a fish, and with malevolent, mis¬ 
trustful, underhand glances. ‘I can stop his game,’ Jim 
said to her once. ‘ Just say the word.’ And do you know 
what she answered ? She said — Jim told me impressively 
— that if she had not been sure he was intensely wretched 
himself, she would have found the courage to kill him with 
her own hands. ‘Just fancy that! The poor devil of a 
girl, almost a child, being driven to talk like that,’ he ex¬ 
claimed in horror. It seemed impossible to save her. not 
only from that mean rascal, but even from herself! It 
wasn’t that he pitied her so much, he affirmed; it was more 
than pity; it was as if he had something on his conscience 
while that life went on. To leave the house would havg 


Lord jim 


271 


appeared a base desertion. He had understood at last that 
there was nothing to expect from a longer stay, neither ac¬ 
counts nor money, nor truth of any sort, but he stayed on, 
exasperating Cornelius to the verge, I won’t say of insanity, 
but almost of courage. Meantime, he felt all sorts of dan¬ 
gers gathering obscurely about him. Doramin had sent 
over twice a trusty servant to tell him seriously that he 
could do nothing for his safety unless he would re-cross the 
river again and live amongst the Bugis, as at first. People 
of every condition used to call, often in the dead of night, 
in order to disclose to him plots for his assassination. He 
was to be poisoned. He was to be stabbed in the bath¬ 
house. Arrangements were being made to have him shot 
from a boat on the river. Each of these informants pro¬ 
fessed himself to be his very good friend. It was enough 

— he told me — to spoil a fellow’s rest for ever. Some¬ 
thing of the kind was extremely possible — nay, probable 

— but the lying warnings gave him only the sense of 
deadly scheming going on all around him, on all sides, in 
the dark. Nothing more calculated to shake the best of 
nerve. Finally, one night, Cornelius himself, with a great 
apparatus of alarm and secrecy, unfolded in solemn wheed¬ 
ling tones a little plan wherein, for one hundred dollars — 
or even for eighty; let’s say eighty — he, Cornelius, would 
procure a trustworthy man to smuggle Jim out of the river, 
all safe. There was nothing else for it now — if Jim cared 
a pin for his life. What’s eighty dollars ? A trifle. An 
insignificant sum. While he, Cornelius, who had to remain 
behind, was absolutely courting death by this proof of devo¬ 
tion to Mr. Stein’s young friend. The sight of his abject 
grimacing was — Jim told me — very hard to bear: he 
clutched at his hair, beat his breast, rocked himself to and 
fro with his hands pressed to his stomach, and actually pre. 


LORD JIM 


27? 


tended to shed tears. * Your blood be on your own head/ 
he squeaked at last, and rushed out. It is a curious ques¬ 
tion how far Cornelius was sincere in that performance. 
Jim confessed to me that he did not sleep a wink after the 
fellow had gone. He lay on his back on a thin mat spread 
over the bamboo flooring, trying idly to make out the bare 
rafters, and listening to the rustlings in the torn thatch. 
A star suddenly twinkled through a hole in the roof. His 
brain was in a whirl; but nevertheless, it was on that very 
night that he matured his plan for overcoming Sherif Ali. 
It had been the thought of all the moments he could spare 
from the hopeless investigation into Stein’s affairs, but the 
notion — he says—came to him then all at once. He could 
see, as it were, the guns mounted on the top of the hill 
He got very hot and excited lying there; sleep was out of 
the question more than ever. He jumped up, and went out 
barefooted on the verandah. Walking silently, he came 
upon the girl, motionless against the wall, as if on the 
watch. In his then state of mind it did not surprise him 
to see her up, nor yet to hear her ask in an anxious whisper 
where Cornelius could be. He simply said he did not 
know. She moaned a little, and peered into the campong. 
Everything was very quiet. He was possessed by his new 
idea, and so full of it that he could not help telling the girl 
all about it at once. She listened, clapped her hands 
lightly, whispered softly her admiration, but was evidently 
on the alert all the time. It seems he had been used to 
make a confidant of her all along — and that she, on her 
part, could and did give him a lot of useful hints as to 
Patusan affairs there is no doubt He assured me more 
than once that he had never found himself the worse for 
her advice. At any rate, he was proceeding to explain hia 
plan fully to her there and then, when she pressed his arm 


LORD JIM 


273 


once, and vanished from his side. Then Cornelius ap» 
peared from somewhere, and perceiving Jim, ducked side¬ 
ways, as though he had been shot at, and afterwards stood 
very still in the dusk. At last he came forward prudently, 
like a suspicious cat. ‘ There were some fishermen there — 
with fish/ he said in a shaky voice. ‘ To sell fish — you 
understand/ ... It must have been then two o’clock in 
the morning — a likely time for anybody to hawk fish 
about! 

“ Jim, however, let the statement pass, and did not give 
it a single thought. Other matters occupied his mind, and 
besides, he had neither seen nor heard anything. He con¬ 
tented himself by saying, ‘Oh!’ absently, got a drink of 
water out of a pitcher standing there, and leaving Cornelius 
a prey to some inexplicable emotion — that made him em¬ 
brace with both arms the worm-eaten rail of the verandah 
as if his legs had failed — went in again and lay down on 
his mat to think. By and by he heard stealthy footsteps. 
They stopped. A voice whispered tremulously through 
the wall, ‘Are you asleep?’ ‘No! What is it?’ he 
answered briskly, and there was an abrupt movement 
outside, and then all was still, as if the whisperer had 
been startled. Extremely annoyed at this, Jim came out 
impetuously, and Cornelius, with a faint shriek, fled along 
the verandah as far as the steps, where he hung on to the 
broken banister. Very puzzled, Jim called out to him from 
the distance to know what the devil he meant. ‘ Have you 
given your consideration to what I spoke to you about?’ 
asked Cornelius, pronouncing the words with difficulty, like 
a man in the cold fit of a fever. ‘No!’ shouted Jim in a 
passion. ‘ I did not, and I don’t intend to. I am going 
to live here, in Patusan.’ ‘You shall d-d-die h-h-here,’ 
answered Cornelius, still shaking violently, and in a sort 


274 


LOKD JIM 


of expiring voice. The whole performance was so absurd 
and provoking that Jim didn’t know whether he ought tc, 
be amused or angry , ‘ Not till I had seen you tucked away, 

you bet/ he called out, exasperated, yet ready to laugh 
Half seriously (being excited with his own thoughts, you 
know) he went on shouting, ‘Nothing can touch me! You 
can do your damnedest.’ Somehow, the shadowy Cornelius 
far off there seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all 
the annoyances and difficulties he had found in his path. 
He let himself go — his nerves had been overwrought for 
days — and called him many pretty names, — swindler, liar, 
sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an extraordinary way. 
He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite beside 
himself — defied all Patusan to scare him away — declared 
he would make them all dance to his own tune yet, and so 
on, in a menacing, boasting strain. Perfectly bombastic 
And ridiculous, he said. His ears burned at the bare recol¬ 
lection. Must have been off his chump in some way. . . . 
The girl, who was sitting with us, nodded her little head 
at me quickly, frowned faintly, and said, ‘I heard him/ 
with child-like solemnity. He laughed and blushed. What 
stopped him at last, he said, was the silence, the complete 
death-like silence, of the indistinct figure far over there, 
that seemed to hang collapsed, doubled over the rail in a 
weird immobility. He came to his senses, and ceasing 
suddenly, wondered greatly at himself. He watched for 
a while. Not a stir, not a sound. ‘Exactly as if the chap 
had died while I had been making all that noise/ he said. 
He was so ashamed of himself that he went indoors in a 
hurry without another word, and flung himself down again 
The row seemed to have done him good, though, because he 
went to sleep for the rest of the night like a baby. Hadn’t 
slept like that for weeks. ‘ But I didn’t sleep/ struck in 


LORD JIM 


275 


the girl, one elbow on the table and nursing her cheek. ‘ I 
watched/ Her big eyes flashed, rolling a little, and then 
she fixed them on my face intently.” 


CHAPTER XXXI 

“You may imagine with what interest I listened. All 
these details were perceived to have some significance 
twenty-four hours later. In the morning Cornelius made 
no allusion to the events of the night. ‘I suppose you 
will come back to my poor house/ he muttered surlily, 
slinking up just as Jim was entering the canoe to go over 
to Doramin’s campong. Jim only nodded, without looking 
at him. ‘ You find it good fun, no doubt/ muttered the 
other in a sour tone. Jim spent the day with the old 
nakhocla, preaching the necessity of vigorous action to 
the principal men of the Bugis community, who had been 
summoned for a big talk. He remembered with pleasure 
lu)W very eloquent and persuasive he had been. ‘I managed 
to put some backbone into them that time, and no mis¬ 
take/ he said. Sherif Ali’s last raid had swept the outskirts 
of the settlement, and some women belonging to the town 
had been carried off to the stockade. Sherif Ali’s emis¬ 
saries had been seen in the market-place the day before, 
strutting about haughtily in white cloaks, and boasting 
of the Rajah’s friendship for their master. One of them 
stood forward in the shade of a tree, and, leaning on 
the long barrel of a rifle, exhorted the people to prayer 
and repentance, advising them to kill all the strangers 
in their midst, some of whom, he said, were infidels and 
others even worse — children of Satan in the guise of 
Moslems. It was reported that several of the Rajah’s 



276 


LORD JIM 


people amongst the listeners had loudly expressed their 
approbation. The terror amongst the common people was 
intense. Jim, immensely pleased with his day’s work, 
crossed the river again before sunset. 

“ As he had got the Bugis irretrievably committed to 
action, and had made himself responsible for success on 
his own head, he was so elated that in the lightness of his 
heart he absolutely tried to be civil with Cornelius. But 
Cornelius became wildly jovial in response, and it was 
almost more than he could stand, he says, to hear his little 
squeaks of false laughter, to see him wriggle and blink, and 
suddenly catch hold of his chin and crouch low over the 
table with a distracted stare. The girl did not show her¬ 
self, and Jim retired early. When he rose to say good¬ 
night, Cornelius jumped up, knocking his chair over, and 
ducked out of sight as if to pick up something he had 
dropped. His good-night came huskily from under the 
table. Jim was amazed to see him emerge out with s 
dropping jaw, and staring, stupidly frightened eyes. He 
clutched the edge of the table. ‘ What’s the matter ? 
Are you unwell ? ’ asked Jim. ‘ Yes, yes, yes. A great 
colic in my stomach/ says the other; and it is Jim’s 
opinion that it was perfectly true. If so, it was, in view 
of his contemplated action, an abject sign of a still imper¬ 
fect callousness for which he must be given all due credit. 

“Be it as it may, Jim’s slumbers were disturbed by a 
dream of heavens like brass resounding with a great voice, 
which called upon him to Awake! Awake ! so loud that, 
notwithstanding his desperate determination to sleep on, 
he did wake up in reality, The glare of a red spluttering 
conflagration going on in mid-air fell on his eyes. Coils of 
black thick smoke curved round the head of some apparh 
tion, some unearthly being, all in white, with a severe, 


.LORD JIM 


277 


drawn, anxious face. After a second or so he recognised 
the girl. She was holding a dammar torch at arm’s-length 
aloft, and in a persistent, urgent monotone she was repeat¬ 
ing, ‘ Get up! Get up ! Get up! ’ 

“ Suddenly he leaped to his feet; at once she put into his 
hand a revolver, his own revolver, which had been hanging 
on a nail, but loaded this time. He gripped it in silence, 
bewildered, blinking in the light. He wondered what he 
could do for her. 

“She asked rapidly and very low, ‘Can you face four 
men with this ? ’ He laughed while narrating this part 
at the recollection of his polite alacrity. It seems he 
made a great display of it. ‘Certainly — of course — cer¬ 
tainly— command me.’ He was not properly awake, and 
had a notion of being very civil in these extraordinary cir¬ 
cumstances, of showing his unquestioning, devoted readi¬ 
ness. She left the room, and he followed her; in the 
passage they disturbed an old hag who did the casual cook¬ 
ing of the household, though she was so decrepit as to be 
hardly able to understand human speech. She got up 
and hobbled behind them, mumbling toothlessly. On the 
verandah a hammock of sail-cloth, belonging to Cornelius, 
swayed lightly to the touch of Jim’s elbow. It was empty. 

“ The Patusan establishment, like all the posts of Stein’s 
Trading Company,.had originally consisted of four build¬ 
ings. Two of them were represented by two heaps of 
sticks, broken bamboos, rotten thatch, over which the four 
corner-posts of hardwood leaned sadly at different angles: 
the principal storeroom, however, stood yet, facing the 
agent’s house. It was an oblong hut, built of mud and 
clay: it had at one end a wide door of stout planking, 
which so far had not come off the hinges, and in one of the 
side walls there was a square aperture, a sort of window 



278 


LORD JIM 


with three wooden bars. Before descending the few steps 
the girl turned her face over her shoulder and said quickly, 
< You were to be set upon while you slept/ Jim tells me 
he experienced a sense of deception. It was the old story. 
He was weary of these attempts upon his life. He had 
had his fill of these alarms. He was sick of them. He 
assured me he was angry with the girl for deceiving him. 
He had followed her under the impression that it was she 
who wanted his help, and now he had half a mind to turn 
on his heel and go back in disgust. ‘Do you know/ he 
commented profoundly, ‘ I rather think I was not quite 
myself for whole weeks on end about that time?’ ‘Oh, 
yes. You were, though,’ I couldn’t help contradicting. 

“ But she moved on swiftly, and he followed her into the 
courtyard. All its fences had fallen in a long time ago; 
the neighbours’ buffaloes would pace in the morning across 
the open space, snorting profoundly, without haste; the 
very jungle was invading it already. Jim and the girl 
stopped in the rank grass. The light in which they stood 
made a dense blackness all round, and only above their 
heads there was an opulent glitter of stars. He told me it 
was a beautiful night — quite cool, with a little stir of 
breeze from the river. It seems he noticed its friendly 
beauty. Remember this is a love-story I am telling you 
now. A lovely night that seemed to breathe on them a soft 
caress. The flame of the torch streamed now and then with 
a fluttering noise like a flag, and for a time this was the 
only sound. ‘ They are in the storeroom waiting,’ whispered 
the girl; ‘they are waiting for the signal.’ ‘Who’s to give 
it ? ’ he asked. She shook the torch, which blazed up after 
a shower of sparks. ‘ Only you have been sleeping so rest, 
lessly/ she continued in a murmur. ‘ I watched your sleep 
too.’ ‘ You ! ’ he exclaimed, craning his neck to look about 


LORD JIM 


279 


him. ‘You think I watched on this night only!’ she said, 
with a sort of despairing indignation. 

“ He says it was as if he had received a blow on the 
chest. He gasped. He thought he had been an awful 
brute somehow, and he felt remorseful, touched, happy, 
elated. This, let me remind you again, is a love-story ; you 
can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive imbecility, the 
exalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station in 
torch-light, as if they had come there on purpose to have it 
out for the edification of concealed murderers. If Sherif 
Ali’s emissaries had been possessed — as Jim remarked — 
of a pennyworth of spunk, this was the time to make a 
rush. His heart was thumping — not with fear — but he 
seemed to hear the grass rustle, and he stepped smartly 
out of the light. Something dark, imperfectly seen, flitted 
rapidly out of sight. He called out in a strong voice, 
‘ Cornelius ! O Cornelius ! ’ A profound silence succeeded : 
his voice did not seem to have carried twenty feet. Again 
the girl was by his side. ‘ Fly ! ’ she said. The old woman 
was coming up; her broken figure hovered in crippled little 
jumps on the edge of the light; they heard her mumbling, 
and a light, moaning sigh. ‘ Fly! ’ repeated the girl excit¬ 
edly. ‘ They are frightened now — this light — the voices. 
They know you are awake now—they know you are big, 
strong, fearless . . . ’ ‘ If I am all that/ he began, but she 

interrupted him. ‘ Yes — to-night! But what of to-morrow 
night ? Of the next night ? Of the night after — of all 
the many, many nights ? Can I be always watching ? 9 A 
sobbing catch of her breath affected him beyond the power 
of words. 

“ He told me that he had never felt so small, so pow 
er ] ess — and as to courage, what was the good of it, he 
thought. He was so helpless that even flight seemed of 



280 


LORD JIM 


no use; and though she kept on whispering, ‘ Go to Dora> 
min, go to Doramin,’ with feverish insistence, he realised 
that for him there was no refuge from that loneliness 
which centupled all his dangers except — in her. ‘ I 
thought/ he said to me, ‘that if I went away from her 
it would be the end of everything, somehow.’ Only as 
they couldn’t stop there for ever in the middle of that 
courtyard, he made up his mind to go and look into the 
storehouse. He let her follow him without thinking of 
any protest, as if they had been indissolubly united. ‘I 
am fearless — am I ? ’ he muttered through his teeth. She 
restrained his arm. ‘Wait till you hear my voice,’ she 
said, and, torch in hand, ran lightly round the corner. 
He remained alone in the darkness, his face to the door: 
not a sound, not a breath came from the other side. The 
old hag let out a dreary groan somewhere behind his back. 
He heard a high-pitched, almost screaming, call from the 
girl. ‘How! Push!’ He pushed violently; the door 
swung with a creak and a clatter, disclosing to his in¬ 
tense astonishment the low dungeon-like interior illumi¬ 
nated by a lurid, wavering glare. A turmoil of smoke 
eddied down upon an empty wooden crate in the middle 
of the floor, a litter of rags and straw tried to soar, but 
only stirred feebly in the draught. She had thrust the 
light through the bars of the window. He saw her bare 
round arm, extended and rigid, holding up the torch with 
the steadiness of an iron bracket. A conical ragged heap 
of old mats cumbered a distant corner almost to the ceil* 
ing, and that was all. 

“ He explained to me that he was bitterly disappointed 
at this. His fortitude had been tried by so many warm 
ings, he had been for weeks surrounded by sc many hints 
of danger, that he wanted the relief of some reality, of 


LORD JIM 


281 


something tangible that he could meet. ‘It would have 
cleared the air for a couple of hours at least, if you know 
what I mean/ he said to me. ‘Jove! I had been living 
for days with a stone on my chest.’ Now at last he had 
thought he would get hold of something, and — nothing! 
Not a trace, not a sign of anybody. He had raised his 
weapon as the door flew open, but now his arm fell. ‘ Fire! 
Defend yourself/ the girl outside cried in an agonising 
voice. She, being in the dark and with her arm thrust 
in to the shoulder through the small hole, couldn’t see 
what was going on, and she dared not withdraw the torch 
now to run round. ‘There’s nobody here!’ yelled Jim, 
contemptuously, but his impulse to burst into a resentful 
exasperated laugh died without a sound: he had perceived 
in the very act of turning away that he was exchanging 
glances with a pair of eyes in the heap of mats. He saw 
a shifting gleam of whites. ‘Come out!’ he cried in a 
fury, a little doubtful, and a dark-faced head, a head with¬ 
out a body, shaped itself in the rubbish, a strangely 
detached head, that looked at him with a steady scowl. 
Next moment the whole mound stirred, and with a low 
grunt a man emerged swiftly, and bounded towards Jim. 
Behind him the mats, as it were, jumped and flew, his right 
arm was raised with a crooked elbow, and the dull blade 
of a Jcris protruded from his fist, held off a little above his 
head. A cloth wound tight round his loins seemed daz- 
zlingly white on his bronze skin; his naked body glistened 
as if wet. 

“ Jim noted all this. He told me he was experiencing a 
feeling of unutterable relief, of vengeful elation. He held 
his shot, he says, deliberately. He held it for the tenth 
part of a second, for three strides of the man — an un¬ 
conscionable time. He held it for the pleasure of saying 


282 


LORD JIM 


to himself, That’s a dead man! He was absolutely posi« 
tive and certain. He let him come on because it did not 
matter. A dead man, anyhow. He noticed the dilated 
nostrils, the wide eyes, the intent, eager stillness of the 
face, and then he fired. 

“The explosion in that confined space was stunning. 
He stepped back a pace. He saw the man jerk his head 
up, fling his arms forward, and drop the kris. He ascer¬ 
tained afterwards that he had shot him through the mouth, 
a little upwards, the bullet coming out high at the back of 
the skull. With the impetus of his rush the man drove 
straight on, his face suddenly gaping disfigured, with his 
hands open before him gropingly, as though blinded, and 
landed with terrific violence on his forehead, just short of 
Jim’s bare toes. Jim says he didn’t lose the smallest detail 
of all this. He found himself calm, appeased, without 
rancour, without uneasiness, as if the death of that mar 
had atoned for everything. The place was getting very full 
of sooty smoke from the torch, in which the unswaying 
flame burned blood-red without a flicker. He walked in 
resolutely, striding over the dead body, and covered with 
his revolver another naked figure outlined vaguely at the 
other end. As he was about to pull the trigger, the man 
threw away with force a short, heavy spear, and squatted 
submissively on his hams, his back to the wall and his 
clasped hands between his legs. ‘You want your life?’ 
Tim said. The other made no sound. ‘How many more 
of you ? ’ asked Jim again. ‘ Two more, Tuan,’ said the 
man very softly, looking with big fascinated eyes into the 
muzzle of the revolver. Accordingly, two more crawled 
from under the mats, holding out ostentatiously theif 
empty hands.’’ 


.LORD JIM 


283 


CHAPTER XXXII 

“ J im took up an advantageous position and shepherded 
them out in a bunch through the doorway: all that time 
the torch had remained vertical in the grip of a little hand, 
without so much as a tremble. The three men obeyed him, 
perfectly mute, moving automatically. He ranged them in 
a row. ‘ Link arms ! 1 he ordered. They did so. •' The first 
who withdraws his arm or turns his head is a dead man,’ 
he said. ‘ March! ’ They stepped out together rigidly ; 
he followed, and at the side the girl, in a trailing 
white gown, her black hair falling as low as her waist, 
bore the light. Erect and swaying, she seemed to glide 
without touching the earth; the only sound was the silky 
swish and rustle of the long grass. ‘ Stop ! 1 cried Jim. 

“ The river-bank was steep; a great freshness ascended, 
the light fell on the edge of smooth, dark water frothing 
without a ripple; right and left the shapes of the houses 
ran together below the sharp outlines of the roofs. ‘ Take 
my greetings to Sherif Ali — till I come myself/ said Jim. 
Not one head of the three budged. ( Jump ! 9 he thundered. 
The three splashes made one splash, a shower flew up, 
black heads bobbed convulsively, and disappeared; but a great 
blowing and spluttering went on, growing faint, for they 
were diving industriously, in great fear of a parting shot. 
Jim turned to the girl, who had been a silent and attentive 
observer. His heart seemed suddenly to grow too big for 
his breast and choke him in the hollow of his throat. This 
probably made him speechless for so long, and after return¬ 
ing his gaze she flung the burning torch with a. wide sweep 
of the arm into the river. The ruddy fiery glare, taking 
a long flight through the night, sank with a vicious 


284 


LORD JIM 


hiss, and the calm soft starlight descended upon them, 
unchecked. 

“ He did not tell me what it was he said when at last he 
recovered his voice. I don’t suppose he could be very 
eloquent. The world was still, the night breathed on them, 
one of those nights that seem created for the sheltering 
of tenderness, and there are moments when our souls, as if 
freed from their dark envelope, glow with an exquisite 
sensibility that makes certain silences more lucid than 
speeches. As to the girl, he told me, ‘ She broke down a 
bit. Excitement — don’t you know. Reaction. Deucedly 
tired she must have been — and all that kind of thing, 
And — and — hang it all — she was fond of me, don’t you 
see. ... I too . . . didn’t know, of course . . never 

entered my head . . J 

u There he got up and began to walk about in some 
agitation. ‘I — I love her dearly. More than I could tell. 
Of course one cannot tell. You take a different view of 
your actions when you come to understand, when you are 
made to understand every day that your existence is 
necessary—you see, absolutely necessary — to another per¬ 
son. I am made to feel that. Wonderful. But only try to 
think what her life had been. It is too extravagantly aw¬ 
ful ! Isn’t it ? And me finding her here like this — as you 
may go out for a stroll and come suddenly upon somebody 
drowning in a lonely, dark place. Jove ! No time to lose. 
Well, it is a trust too. ... I believe I am equal ro it. . . 

"I must tell you the girl had left us to ourselves some 
time before. He slapped his chest. Wes! I feel that, but 
I believe I am equal to all my luck ! ’ He had the gift of 
finding a special meaning in everything that happened 
to him. This was the view he took of his love-affair; it 
was idyllic, a little solemn, and also true, since his 


LORD JIM 


J8 

belief had all the unshakable seriousness of youth. Some 
time after, on another occasion, he said to me, ‘ I’ve beer 
only two years here, and now, upon my word, I can’t con 
ceive being able to live anywhere else. The very thought 
of the world outside is enough to give me a fright; because 
don’t you see,’ he continued, with downcast eyes watching 
the action of his boot busied in squashing thoroughly a 
tiny bit of dried mud (we were strolling on the river-bank) 
— * Because I have not forgotten why I came here. Not 
yet!’ 

“ I refrained from looking at him, but I think I heard a 
short sigh; we took a * urn or two in silence. ‘Upon my 
soul and conscience,’ he began again, ‘if such a thing can 
be forgotten, then I think I have a right to dismiss it from 
my mind. Ask any man here ’ . . . his voice changed. * Is 
it not strange,’ he went on in a gentle, almost yearning 
tone, ‘ that all these people, all these people who would do 
anything for me, can never be made to understand ? Never! 
If you disbelieved me I could not call them up. It seems 
hard, somehow. I am stupid, am I not ? What more can 
I want ? If you ask them who is brave — who is true — 
who is just — who is it they would trust with their lives? 
-—they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet they can never 
know the real, real truth . . .’ 

“ That’s what he said to me on my last day with him. I 
did not let a murmur escape me: I felt he was going to say 
more, and come no nearer to the root of the matter. The 
sun, whose concentrated glare dwarfs the earth into a rest¬ 
less mote of dust, had sunk behind the forest, and the dif¬ 
fused light from an opal sky seemed to cast upon a world 
without shadows and without brilliance the illusion of a 
calm and pensive greatness. I don’t know why, listening 
to him, I should have noted so distinctly the gradual dark 



286 


LORD JIM 


ening of the river, of the air; the irresistible slow work of 
the night settling silently on all the visible forms, effacing 
the outlines, burying the shapes deeper and deeper, like a 
steady fall of impalpable black dust. 

“‘Jove!’ he began abruptly, ‘ there are days when a 
fellow is too absurd for anything; only I know I can tell 
you what I like. I talk about being done with it — with 
the bally thing at the back of my head . . . Forgetting 
. . . Hang me if I know ! I can think of it quietly. After 
all, what has it proved ? Nothing. I suppose you don’t 
think so . . .’ 

“ I made a protesting murmuT. 

“‘ No matter,’ he said. ‘1 am satisfied . . . nearly. I’ve 
got to look only at the face of the first man that comes 
along, to regain my confidence. They can’t be made to 
understand what is going on in me. What of that ? Come! 
I haven’t done so badly.’ 

“‘Not so badly,’ I said. 

“ ‘ But all the same, you wouldn’t like to have me aboard 
your own ship — hey ? ’ 

“ ‘ Confound you ! ’ I cried. ‘ Stop this.’ 

“ ‘ Aha! You see,’ he said, crowing, as it were, over me 
placidly. ‘ Only,’ he went on, 1 you just try to tell this to 
any of them here. They would think you a fool, a liar, or 
worse. And so I can stand it. I’ve done a thing or two 
for them, but this is what they have done for me.’ 

“ ‘ My dear chap,’ I cried, ‘ you shall always remain for 
them an insoluble mystery.’ Thereupon we were silent. 

“‘Mystery,’ he repeated, before looking up. ‘Well, then, 
let me always remain here.’ 

“ After the sun had set, the darkness seemed to drive upon 
us, borne in every faint puff of the breeze. In the middle 
of a hedged path T saw the arrested, gaunt, watchful, 


LORD JIM 


287 


*nd apparently one-legged silhouette of Tamb’ Itam; 
and across the dusky space my eye detected something 
white moving to and fro behind the supports of the roof. 
As soon as Jim, with Tamb’ Itam at his heels, had started 
upon his evening rounds, I went up to the house alone, and 
unexpectedly found myself waylaid by the girl, who had 
been clearly waiting for this opportunity. 

“ It is hard to tell you what it was precisely she wanted 
to wrest from me. Obviously, it would be something very 
simple—the simplest impossibility in the world; as, for 
instance, the exact description of the form of a cloud. She 
wanted an assurance, a statement, a promise, an explanation 
— I don’t know how to call it: the thing has no name. It 
was dark under the projecting roof, and all I could see were 
the flowing lines of her gown, the pale small oval of her 
face, with the white flash of her teeth, and, turned towards 
me, the big sombre orbits of her eyes, where there seemed to 
be a faint stir, such as you may fancy you can detect when 
you plunge your gaze to the bottom of an immensely deep 
well. What is it that moves there ? you ask yourself. Is 
it a blind monster, or only a lost gleam from the universe ? 
It occurred to me — don’t laugh — that all things being dis¬ 
similar, she was more inscrutable in her childish ignorance 
than the sphinx propounding childish riddles to wayfarers. 
She had been carried off to Patusan before her eyes were 
open. She had grown up there; she had seen nothing, she 
had known nothing, she had no conception of anything. I 
ask myself whether she were sure that anything else existed. 
What notions she may have formed of the outside world is 
to me inconceivable: all that she knew of its inhabitants 
were a betrayed woman and a sinister pantaloon. Her 
lover also came to her from there, gifted with irresistible 
seductions; but what would become of her if he should 



288 


LOUD JIM 


return to these inconceivable regions that seemed always to 
claim back their own! Her mother had warned her of this 
with tears, before she died . . . 

“ She had caught hold of my arm firmly, and as soon as I 
had stopped she had withdrawn her hand in haste. She 
was audacious and shrinking. She feared nothing, but she 
was checked by the profound incertitude and the extreme 
strangeness — a brave person groping in the dark. I 
belonged to this Unknown that might claim Jim for its 
own at any moment. I was, as it were, in the secret of its 
nature and of its intentions; — the confidant of a threaten¬ 
ing mystery; — armed with its power, perhaps! I believe 
she supposed I could with a word whisk Jim away out of 
her very arms : it is my sober conviction she went through 
agonies of apprehension during my long talks with Jim; 
through a real and intolerable anguish that might have con¬ 
ceivably driven her into plotting my murder, had the fierce¬ 
ness cf her soul been equal to the tremendous situation it 
had created. This is my impression, and it is all I can give 
you: the whole thing dawned gradually upon me, and as it 
got clearer and clearer I was overwhelmed by a slow, in¬ 
credulous amazement. She made me believe her, but there 
is no word that on my lips could render the effect of the 
headlong and vehement whisper, of the soft, passionate 
tones, of the sudden breathless pause and the appealing 
movement of the white arms extended swiftly. They fell; 
the ghostly figure swayed like a slender tree in the wind, 
the pale oval of the face drooped; it was impossible to 
distinguish her features, the darkness of the eyes wag 
unfathomable; two wide sleeves uprose in the dark like 
unfolding wings, and she stood silent, holding her head in 
her hands.” 


LORD JIM 


289 


CHAPTER XXXIII 

“ I was immensely touched: her youth, her ignorance, hei 
pretty beauty, which had the simple charm and the deli¬ 
cate vigour of a wild-flower, her pathetic pleading, her help¬ 
lessness, appealed to me with almost the strength of her own 
unreasonable and natural fear. She feared the unknown 
as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely 
vast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows, for all 
the world that neither cared for Jim nor needed him in 
the least. I would have been ready enough to answer for the 
indifference of the teeming earth but for the reflection 
that he too belonged to this mysterious unknown of her 
fears, and that, however much I stood for, I did not stand 
for him. This made me hesitate. A murmur of hopeless 
pain unsealed my lips. I began by protesting that I at 
least had come with no intention to take Jim away. 

“ Why did I come, then ? After a slight movement she 
was as still as a marble statue in the night. I tried to 
explain briefly: friendship, business; if I had any wish in 
the matter it was rather to see him stay. . . ‘They 
always leave us/ she murmured. The breath of sad wis¬ 
dom from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers 
seemed to pass in a faint sigh. . . . Nothing, said I, could 
separate Jim from her. 

“It is my firm conviction now 5 it was my conviction at 
the time ; it was the only possible conclusion from the facts 
of the case. It was not made more certain by her whisper¬ 
ing in a tone in which one speaks to oneself, ‘ He swore this 
to me.’ ‘ Did you ask him ? ’ I said. 

“ She made a step nearer. ‘ No. Never! * She had asked 
him only to go away. It was that night on the river-bank. 



290 


LORD JIM 


after he had killed the man — after she had flung the 
torch into the water because he was looking at her sa 
There was too much light, and the danger was over then —• 
for a little time — for a little time. He said then he would 
not abandon her to Cornelius. She had insisted. She 
wanted him to leave her. He said that he could not — that 
it was impossible. He trembled while he said this. She 
had felt him tremble. . . . One does not require much 
imagination to see the scene, almost to hear their whispers. 
She was afraid for him too. I believe that then she saw in 
him only a predestined victim of dangers which she under¬ 
stood better than himself. Though by nothing but his 
mere presence he had mastered her heart, had filled all her 
thoughts, and had possessed himself of all her affections, 
she underestimated his chances of success. It is obvious 
that at about that time everybody was inclined to under- 
estimate his chances. Strictly speaking, he didn’t seem to 
have any. I know this was Cornelius’s view. He con¬ 
fessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part 
he had played in Sherif Ali’s plot to do away with the 
infidel. Even Sherif Ali himself, as it seems certain now, 
had nothing but contempt for the white man. Jim was to be 
murdered mainly on religious grounds, I believe. A simple 
act of piety (and so far infinitely meritorious), but other¬ 
wise without much importance. In the last part of this 
opinion Cornelius concurred. ‘ Honourable sir,’ he argued 
abjectly on the only occasion he managed to have me to 
himself — ‘ Honourable sir, how was I to know ? Who 
was he ? What could he do to make people believe him ? 
What did Mr. Stein mean sending a boy like that to talk 
to an old servant ? I was ready to save him for eighty 
dollars. Only eighty dollars. Why didn’t the fool go? 
Was I to get stabbed myself for the sake of a stranger? 1 


LORD JIM 


m 


He grovelled in spirit before me, with his body doubled up 
insinuatingly and his hands hovering about my knees, as 
though he were ready to embrace my legs. 1 What’s eighty 
dollars ? An insignificant sum to give to a defenceless old 
man ruined for life by a deceased she-devil.’ Here he 
A^ept. But I anticipate. I didn’t that night chance upon 
Cornelius till I had had it out with the girl. 

“ She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and 
even to leave the country. It was his danger that was fore¬ 
most in her thoughts — even if she wanted to save herself 
too — perhaps unconsciously : but then look at the warning 
she had, look at the lesson that could be drawn from every 
moment of the recently ended life in which all her memories 
were centred. She fell at his feet — she told me so — 
there by the river, in the discreet light of stars which showed 
nothing except great masses of silent shadows, indefinite open 
spaces, and trembling faintly upon the broad stream made it 
appear as wide as the sea. He had lifted her up. He lifted 
her up, and then she would struggle no more. Of course 
not. Strong arms, a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to 
rest her poor lonely little head upon. The need — the in¬ 
finite need — of all this for the aching heart, for the bewil¬ 
dered mind; — the promptings of youth — the necessity of 
the moment. What would you have ? One understands — 
unless one is incapable of understanding anything under 
the sun. And so she was content to be lifted up — and held. 
‘You know — Jove! this is serious — no nonsense in it!’ 
as Jim had whispered hurriedly with a troubled, concerned 
face on the threshold of his house. I don’t know so much 
about nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their 
romance: they came together under the shadow of a life’s 
disaster, like knight and maiden meeting to exchange vows 
amongst haunted ruins. The starlight was good enough for 


292 


LORD JIM 


that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot resolve 
shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream. 
I did look upon the stream that night and from the very 
place; it rolled silent and as black as Styx : the next day I 
went away, but I am not likely to forget what it was she 
wanted to be saved from when she entreated him to leave 
her while there was time. She told me what it was, calmed 
— she was now too passionately interested for mere excite¬ 
ment— in a voice as quiet in the obscurity as her white, 
half-lost figure. She told me, c I didn’t want to die weeping.’ 
I thought I had not heard aright. 

“ ‘ You did not want to die weeping ? ’ I repeated after 
her. 1 Like my mother,’ she added readily. The outlines of 
her white shape did not stir in the least. ‘ My mother had 
wept bitterly before she died,’ she explained. An incon¬ 
ceivable calmness seemed to have risen from the ground 
around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of a flood in the 
night, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions. There 
came upon me, as though I had felt myself losing my foot¬ 
ing in the midst of waters, a sudden dread — the dread of the 
unknown depths. She went on explaining that, during the 
last moments, being alone with her mother, she had to leave 
the side of the couch to go and set her back against the door, 
in order to keep Cornelius out. He desired to get in, and 
kept on drumming with both fists, only desisting now and 
again to shout huskily, ‘ Let rue in ! Let me in ! Let me in! ’ 
In a far corner upon a few mats the moribund woman, already 
speechless and unable to lift her arm, rolled her head over, 
and with a feeble movement of her hand seemed to com¬ 
mand— No! No! and the obedient daughter, setting her 
shoulders with all her strength against the door, was looking 
on. ‘ The tears fell from her eyes — and then she died/ 
concluded the girl in an imperturbable monotone, which moi> 


LORD JIM 


293 


than anything else, more than the white statuesque immo¬ 
bility of her person, more than mere words could do, troubled 
my mind profoundly with the passive, irremediable horror 
of the scene. It had the power to drive me out of my con¬ 
ception of existence, out of that shelter each of us makes 
for himself to creep under in moments of danger, as a tor¬ 
toise withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had a view 
of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect 
of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, 
it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the 
mind of man can conceive. But still — it was only a moment: 
I went back into my shell directly. One must — don’t you 
know ? — though I seemed to have lost all my words in the 
chaos of dark thoughts I had contemplated for a second or 
two beyond the pale. These came back too, very soon, for 
words also belong to the sheltering conception of light and 
the order which is our refuge. I had them ready at my 
disposal before she whispered softly, ‘He swore he would 
never leave me, when we stood there alone! He swore to me! ’ 
. . . ‘And is it possible that you — you! do not believe 
him?’ I asked, sincerely reproachful, genuinely shocked 
Why couldn’t she believe? Wherefore this craving for 
incertitude, this clinging to fear, as if incertitude and fear 
had been the safeguards of her love. It was monstrous. 
She should have made for herself a shelter of inexpugnable 
peace out of that honest affection. She had not the know¬ 
ledge— not the skill, perhaps. The night had come on 
apace; it had grown pitch-dark where we were, so that 
without stirrings he had faded like the intangible form of 
a wistful and perverse spirit. And suddenly I heard her 
quiet whisper again, ‘ Other men had sworn the same thing.’ 
It was like a meditative comment on some thoughts full of 
Sadness, of awe. And she added, still lower if possible, 


294 


LORD JIM 


‘ My father did. , She paused the time to draw an inaudible 
breath. ‘ Her father too/ . . . These were the things she 
knew ! At once I said,‘ Ah! but he is not like that/ This, 
it seemed, she did not intend to dispute; but after a time 
the strange still whisper, wandering dreamily in the air, 
stole into my ears. ‘ Why is he different ? Is he better ? 
Is he . . / ‘Upon my word of honour,’ I broke in, ‘I be 
lieve he is/ We subdued our tones to a mysterious pitch. 
Amongst the huts of Jim’s workmen (they were mostly lib¬ 
erated slaves from the Sherif’s stockade) somebody started 
a shrill, drawling song. Across the river a big fire (at 
Doramin’s, I think) made a glowing ball, completely isolated 
in the night. ‘Is he more true?’ she murmured. ‘Yes,* 
I said. 

“ ‘ More true than any other man,’ she repeated, in linger¬ 
ing accents. ‘Nobody here,’ I said, ‘would dream of doubt¬ 
ing his word — nobody would dare — except you.’ 

“I think she made a movement at this. ‘More brave,’ 
she went on in a changed tone. ‘Fear shall never drive 
him away from you,’ I said a little nervously. The song 
stopped short on a shrill note, and was succeeded by several 
voices talking in the distance. Jim’s voice, too. I was 
struck by her silence. ‘What has he been telling you? 
He had been telling you something ? ’ I asked. There 
was no answer. ‘ What is it he told you ? ’ I insisted. 

“ ‘ Do you think I can tell you ? How am I to know ? 
How am I to understand ? ’ she cried at last. There was 
a stir. I believe she was wringing her hands. ‘ There is 
something he can never forget.’ 

“ ‘ So much the better for you,’ I said gloomily. 

“ ‘ What is it ? What is it ? ’ She put an extraordinary 
force of appeal into her supplicating tone. ‘ He says he had 
been afraid. How can I believe this! Am I a mad woman 


LORD JIM 


295 


to believe this ? You all remember something! You all 
go back to it. What is it? You tell me! What is this 
thing ? Is it alive ? — is it dead ? I hate it. It is cruel. 
Has it got a face and a voice — this calamity ? Will he 
see it — will he hear it? In his sleep, perhaps, when he 
cannot see me — and then arise and go. Ah! I shall never 
forgive him. My mother had forgiven — but I, never! 
Will it be a sign — a call . . 2 

“It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his 
very slumbers — and she seemed to think I could tell her 
why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by the charm of an 
apparition might have tried to wring from another ghost 
the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds 
over a disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this 
earth. The very ground on which I stood seemed to melt 
under my feet. And it was so simple, too; but if the spirits 
evoked by our fears and our unrest have ever to vouch for 
each other’s constancy before the forlorn magicians that we 
are, then I — I alone of us dwellers in the flesh — have 
shuddered in the hopeless chill of such a task. A sign, a 
call! How telling in its expression was her ignorance. A 
few words ! How she came to know them, how she came 
to pronounce them, I can’t imagine. Women find their 
inspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely 
awful, absurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice 
at all was enough to strike awe into the heart. Had a 
spurned stone cried out in pain it could not have appeared 
a greater and more pitiful miracle. These few sounds wan¬ 
dering in the dark had made their two benighted lives 
tragic to my mind. It was impossible to make her under¬ 
stand. I chafed silently at my impotence. And Jim, 
too — poor devil! Who would need him? Who would 
remember him? He had what he wanted. His very 




296 


LORI} JIM 


existence probably had been forgotten by this time. They 
had mastered their fates. They were tragic. 

“Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and 
my part was to speak for my brother from the realm of for¬ 
getful shades. I was deeply moved at my responsibility 
and at her distress. I would have given anything for the 
power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in its 
invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the 
cruel wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have 
no fear! Nothing more difficult. How does one kill fear, 
I wonder ? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, 
slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat? 
It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are 
glad to make your escape with wet hair and every limb 
shaking. The bullet is not run, the blade not forged, the 
man not born; even the winged words of truth drop at your 
feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a desperate 
encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie 
too subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, 
my masters! 

“I began my exorcism with a heavy’heart, with a sort of 
sullen anger in it too. Jim’s voice, suddenly raised with 
a stern intonation, carried across the courtyard, reproving 
the carelessness of some dumb sinner by the river-side. 
Nothing — I said, speaking in a distinct murmur — there 
could be nothing in that unknown world she fancied so 
eager to rob her of her happiness, there was nothing, 
neither living nor dead, there was no face, no voice, no 
power, that could tear Jim from her side. I drew breath 
and she whispered softly, ‘ He told me so.’ ‘ He told 
you the truth,’ I said. ‘ Nothing,’ she sighed out, and 
abruptly turned upon me with a barely audible intensity 
of tone. ‘ Why did you come to us from out there ? Ho 


LORD JIM 


297 


speaks of you too often. You make me afraid. Do you — 
do you want him ? ’ A sort of stealthy fierceness had crept 
into our hurried mutters. ‘I shall never come again/ I 
said bitterly; ‘ And I don’t want him. No one wants him.’ 
‘No one/ she repeated in a tone of doubt. ‘No one/ I 
affirmed, feeling myself swayed by some strange excite¬ 
ment. ‘You think him strong, wise, courageous, great — 
why not believe him to be true, too ? I shall go to-morrow 
•—and that is the end. You shall never be troubled by a 
voice from there again. This world you don’t know is too 
big to miss him. You understand ? Too big. You’ve got 
his heart in your hand. You must feel that. You must 
know that.’ ‘Yes, I know that/ she breathed out, hard and 
still, as a statue might whisper. 

“ I felt I had done nothing. And what is it that I had 
wished to do ? I am not sure now. At the time I was ani¬ 
mated by an inexplicable ardour, as if before some great 
and necessary task — the influence of the moment upon my 
mental and emotional state. There are in all our lives such 
moments, such influences, coming from the outside, as it 
were, irresistible, incomprehensible — as if brought about 
by the mysterious conjunctions of the planets. She owned, 
as I had put it to her, his heart. She had that and every¬ 
thing else — if she could only believe it. What I had to 
tell her was that in the whole world there was no one who 
ever would need his heart, his mind, his hand. It was a 
common fate, and yet it seemed an awful thing to say of 
any man. She listened without a word, and her stillness 
now was like the protest of an invincible unbelief. What 
need she care for the world beyond the forests ? I asked. 
From all the multitudes that peopled the vastness of that 
unknown there would come, I assured her, as long as he 
lived, neither a call nor a sign for him. Never. X was 


298 


LORD JIM 


carried away. Never! Never! I remember with wondei 
the sort of dogged fierceness 1 displayed. I had the illu¬ 
sion of having got the spectre by the throat at last. Indeed* 
the whole real thing has left behind the detailed and amaz* 
ing impression of a dream. Why should she fear ? She 
knew him to be strong, true, wise, brave. He was all that 
Certainly. He was more. He was great — invincible — 
and the world did not want him, it had forgotten him, it 
would not even know him. 

“I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound, and 
the feeble dry sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe' 
somewhere in the middle of the river seemed to make it 
infinite. 4 Why ? ’ she murmured. I felt that sort of rage 
one feels during a hard tussle. The spectre was trying to 
slip out of my grasp. 4 Why ?’ she repeated louder; 4 tell 
me !’ And as I remained confounded, she stamped with Ler 
foot like a spoilt child. 4 Why ? Speak.’ 4 You want to 
Kiiow,’ I asked in a fury. 4 Yes! ’ she cried. 4 Because he 
is not good enough,’ I said brutally. During the moment’s 
pause I noticed the fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating 
the circle of its glow like an amazed stare, and contract sud¬ 
denly to a red pin-point. I only knew how close to me she 
had been when I felt the clutch of her fingers on my fore¬ 
arm. Without raising her voice, she threw into it an in¬ 
finity of scathing contempt, bitterness, and despair. 

44 4 This is the very thing he said. . . . You lie ! ’ 

44 The last two words she cried at me in the native dialect. 

4 Hear me out! ’ I entreated; she caught her breath tremu¬ 
lously, flung my arm away. ‘Nobody, nobody is good 
enough,’ I began with the greatest earnestness. I could 
hear the sobbing labour of her breath frightfully quickened. 

I hung my head. What was the use ? Footsteps were 
approaching; I slipped away without another word. ...” 


LORD JIM 


299 


CHAPTER XXXIV 

Marlow swung his legs out, got up quickly, and stag¬ 
gered a little, as though he had been set down after a rush 
through space. He leaned his back against the balustrade 
and faced a disordered array of long cane-chairs. The 
bodies prone in them seemed startled out of their torpor by 
his movement. One or two sat up as if alarmed; here and 
there a cigar glowed yet; Marlow looked at them all with 
the eyes of a man returning from the excessive remoteness- 
of a dream. A throat was cleared; a calm voice encouraged 
negligently, “ Well ? ” 

“Nothing,” said Marlow with a slight start. “He had 
told her — that’s all. She did not believe him — nothing 
more. As to myself, I do not know whether it be just, 
proper, decent for me to rejoice or to be sorry. For my 
part, I cannot say what I believed — indeed I don’t know to 
this day, and never shall probably. But what did the poor 
devil believe himself? Truth shall prevail — don’t you 
know. Magna est veritas et . . .Yes, when it gets a 
chance. There is a law, no doubt — and likewise a law 
regulates your luck in the throwing of dice. It is not 
Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune — 
the ally of patient Time — that holds an even and scrupu¬ 
lous balance. Both of us had said the very same thing. 
Did we both speak the truth — or one of us did—or 
neither ? ” . . . 

Marlow paused, crossed his arms on his breast, and in a 
changed tone — 

“She said we lied. Poor soul. Well — let’s leave it to 
chance, whose ally is Time, that cannot be hurried, and 
vhose enemy is Death, that will not wait. I had retreated 





soo 


LORD JIM 


— a little cowed, I must own. I had tried a fall with feast 
itself and got thrown— of course. I had only succeeded in 
adding to her anguish the hint of some mysterious collusion, 
of an inexplicable and incomprehensible conspiracy to keep 
her for ever in the dark. And it had come easily, naturally, 
unavoidably, by his act, by her own act! It was as though 
I had been shown the working of the implacable destiny of 
which we are the victims — and the tools. It was appalling 
to think of the girl whom I had left standing there motion¬ 
less ; Jim’s footsteps had a fateful sound as he tramped by, 
without seeing me, in his heavy laced boots. ‘ What ? No 
lights!’ he said in a loud, surprised voice. ‘ What are you 
doing in the dark—you two.’ Next moment he caught 
sight of her, I suppose. i Hallo, girl!’ he cried cheerily. 
1 Hallo, boy! ’ she answered at once, with amazing pluck. 

“This was their usual greeting to each other, and the 
bit of swagger she would put into her rather high but 
sweet voice was very droll, pretty, and child-like. It de¬ 
lighted Jim greatly. This was the last occasion on which 
I heard them exchange this familiar hail, and it struck a 
chill into my heart. There was the high sweet voice, the 
pretty effort, the swagger; but it all seemed to die out 
prematurely, and the playful call sounded like a moan. 
It was too confoundedly awful. ‘ What have you done 
with Marlow ? 9 Jim was asking; and then, ‘ Gone down 

— has he? Funny I didn’t meet him. . . . You there, 
Marlow ? ’ 

“I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going in — not yet, at any 
rate. I really couldn’t. While he was calling me I was 
engaged in making my escape through a little gate leading 
out upon a stretch of newly cleared ground. No; I couldn’t 
face them yet. 1 walked hastily with lowered head along 
a trodden path The ground rose gently, the few big trees 




LORD JIM 


301 


had been felled, the undergrowth had been cut down and 
the grass fired. He had a mind to try a coffee-plantation 
there. The big hill, rearing its double summit coal-black 
in the clear yellow glow of the rising moon, seemed to cast 
its shadow upon the ground prepared for that experiment. 
He was going to try ever so many experiments; I had ad¬ 
mired his energy, his enterprise, and his shrewdness. Noth¬ 
ing on earth seemed less real now than his plans, his energy, 
and his enthusiasm; and raising my eyes, I saw part of the 
moon glittering through the bushes at the bottom of the 
chasm. For a moment it looked as though the smooth disk, 
falling from its place in the sky upon the earth, had rolled 
to the bottom of that precipice: its ascending movement 
was like a leisurely rebound; it disengaged itself from the 
tangle of twigs; the bare contorted limb of some tree, grow¬ 
ing on the slope, made a black crack right across its face. 
It threw its level rays afar as if from a cavern, and in this 
mournful eclipse-like light the stumps of felled trees uprose 
very dark, the heavy shadows fell at my feet on all sides, 
my own moving shadow, and across my path the shadow of 
the solitary grave perpetually garlanded with flowers. In 
the darkened moonlight the interlaced blossoms took on 
shapes foreign to one’s memory and colours indefinable to 
the eye, as though they had been special flowers gathered 
by no man, grown not in this world, and destined for the 
use of the dead alone. Their powerful scent hung in the 
warm air, making it thick and heavy like the fumes of 
incense. The lumps of white coral shone round the dark 
mound like a chaplet of bleached skulls, and everything 
around was so quiet that when I stood still all sound and 
all movement in the world seemed to come to an end. 

“ It was a great peace, as if the earth had been one grave, 
and for a time I stood there thinking mostly of the living 





*02 


LORD JIM 


who, buried in remote places out of the knowledge of man* 
kind, still are fated to share in its tragic or grotesque 
miseries. In its noble struggles, too — who knows ? The 
human heart is vast enough to contain all the world It 
is valiant enough to bear the burden, but where is the 
courage that would cast it off? 

“ I suppose I must have fallen into a sentimental mood; 
I only know that I stood there long enough for the sense 
of utter solitude to get hold of me so completely that all 
I had lately seen, all I had heard, and the very human 
speech itself, seemed to have passed away out of exist¬ 
ence, living only for a while longer in my memory, as 
thougn I had been the last of mankind. It was a 
strange and melancholy illusion, evolved half-consciously 
like all our illusions, which I suspect only to be visions 
of remote unattainable truth, seen dimly. This was, 
indeed, one of the lost, forgotten, unknown places of the 
earth; I had looked under its obscure surface; and I felt 
that when to-morrow I had left it for ever, it would slip 
out of existence, to live only in my memory till I myself 
passed into oblivion. I have that feeling about me now; 
perhaps it is that feeling which has incited me to tell 
you the story, to try to hand over to you, as it were, its 
very existence, its reality—the truth disclosed in a moment 
of illusion. 

“ Cornelius broke upon it. He bolted out, vermin-like, 
from the long grass growing in a depression of the ground. 
I believe his house was rotting somewhere near by, though 
I’ve never seen it, not having been far enough in that 
direction. He ran towards me upon the path; his feet, 
shod in dirty white shoes, twinkled on the dark earth; 
he pulled himself up, and began to whine and cringe 
under a tall stove-pipe hat. His dried-up little carcass 






LORD JIM 


303 


was swallowed up, totally lost, in a suit of black broad¬ 
cloth. That was his costume for holidays and ceremonies, 
and it reminded me that this was the fourth Sunday 1 
had spent in Patusan. All the time of my stay I had 
been vaguely aware of his desire to confide in me, if he 
only could get me all to himself. He hung about with 
an eager craving look on his sour yellow little face; but 
his timidity had kept him back as much as my natural 
reluctance to have anything to do with such an unsavoury 
creature. He would have succeeded, nevertheless, had he 
not been so ready to slink off as soon as you looked at 
him. He would slink off before Jim’s severe gaze, before 
my own, which I tried to make indifferent, even before 
Tamb’ Itam’s surly, superior glance. He was perpetually 
slinking away; whenever seen he was seen moving off 
deviously, his face over his shoulder, with either a mis¬ 
trustful snarl or a woe-begone, piteous, mute aspect; but 
no assumed expression could conceal this innate irremedi¬ 
able abjectness of his nature, any more than an arrange¬ 
ment of clothing can conceal some monstrous deformity 
of the body. 

“ I don’t know whether it was the demoralisation of 
my utter defeat in my encounter with a spectre of fear 
less than an hour ago, but I let him capture me without 
even a show of resistance. I was doomed to be the recip¬ 
ient of confidences, and to be confounded with unan¬ 
swerable questions. It was trying; but the contempt, the 
unreasoned contempt, the man’s appearance provoked, made 
it easier to bear. He couldn’t possibly matter. Nothing 
mattered, since I had made up my mind that Jim, for 
whom alone I cared, had at last mastered his fate. He 
had told me he was satisfied . . . nearly. This is going 
further than most of us dare. I—who have the right 



LORD JIM 


504 

to think myself good enough — dare not. Neither doea 
any of you here, I suppose? ...” 

Marlow paused, as if expecting an answer. Nobody 
spoke. 

“ Quite right,” he began again. “ Let no soul know, since 
the truth can be wrung out of us only by some cruel, little, 
awful catastrophe. But he is one of us, and he could say 
he was satisfied . . . nearly. Just fancy this! Nearly 
satisfied. One could almost envy him his catastrophe. 
Nearly satisfied. After this nothing could matter. It did 
not matter who suspected him, who trusted him, who 
loved him, who hated him — especially as it was Cornelius 
who hated him. 

“ Yet after all this was a kind of recognition. You shall 
judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends, and 
this enemy of Jim was such as no decent man would be 
ashamed to own, without, however, making too much of 
him. This was the view Jim took, and in which I shared; 
but 'Jim disregarded him on general grounds. ‘ My dear 
Marlow/ he said, 1 1 feel that if I go straight nothing can 
touch me. Indeed I do. Now you have been long enough 
here to have a good look round — and, frankly, don’t you 
think I am pretty safe? It all depends upon me, and, by 
Jove ! I have lots of confidence in myself. The worst thing 
he could do would be to kill me, I suppose. I don’t think 
for a moment he would. He couldn’t, you know— not if I 
were myself to hand him a loaded rifle for the purpose, and 
then turn my back on him. That’s the sort of thing he is. 
And suppose he would — suppose he could? Well — what 
of that ? I didn’t come here flying for my life — did I ? 
I came here to set my back against the wall, and I am 
going to stay here . . 

“ • Till you are quite satisfied/ I struck in. 


LOKD JIM 


305* 


" We were sitting at the time under the roof in the stern 
of his boat; twenty paddles flashed like one, ten on a side, 
striking the water with a single splash, while behind our 
backs Tamb’ Itam dipped silently right and left, and 
stared right down the river, attentive to keep the long 
canoe in the greatest strength of the current. Jim bowed 
his head, and our last talk seemed to flicker out for good. 
He was seeing me off as far as the mouth of the river. The 
schooner had left the day before, working down and drift¬ 
ing on the ebb, while I had prolonged my stay overnight. 
And now he was seeing me off. 

“Jim had been a little angry with me for mentioning 
Cornelius at all. I had not, in truth, said much. The man 
was too insignificant to be dangerous, though he was as 
full of hate as he could hold. He had called me 1 honour¬ 
able sir ’ at every second sentence, and had whined at my * 
elbow as he followed me from the grave of his ‘ late wife’ 
to the gate of Jim’s compound. He declared himself the 
most unhappy of men, a victim, crushed like a worm; he 
entreated me to look at him. I wouldn’t turn my head to 
do so; but I could see out of the corner of my eye his 
obsequious shadow gliding after mine, while the moon, sus¬ 
pended on our right hand, seemed to gloat serenely upon 
the spectacle. He tried to explain — as I’ve told you — his 
share in the events of the memorable night. It was a mat¬ 
ter of expediency. How could he know who was going to 
get the upper hand ? ‘ I would have saved him, honourable 
sir! I would have saved him for eighty dollars,’ he pro¬ 
tested, in dulcet tones, keeping a pace behind me. ‘ He has 
saved himself,’ I said, 4 and he has forgiven you.’ I heard 
a sort of tittering, and turned upon him; at once he appeared 
ready to take to his heels. ‘ What are you laughing at ? ’ I 
asked, standing still. 4 Don’t be deceived, honourable sir» 


806 


LOKD JIM 


he shrieked, seemingly losing all control over his feelings 
4 He save himself! He knows nothing, honourable sir — 
nothing whatever. Who is he ? What does he want here 
— the big thief ? What does he want here ? He throws 
dust into everybody's eyes; he throws dust into your eyes, 
honourable sir; but he can’t throw dust into my eyes. He 
is a big fool, honourable sir/ I laughed contemptuously, 
and, turning on my heel, began to walk on again. He ran 
up to my elbow and w hispered forcibly, * He’s no more than 
a little child here — like a little child — a little child/ Of 
course, I didn’t take the slightest notice, and seeing the 
time pressed, because we were approaching the bambo<s 
fence that glittered over the blackened ground of the clear 
ing, he came to the point. He commenced by being abjectly 
lachrymose. His great misfortunes had affected his head. 
He hoped I would kindly forget what nothing but his 
troubles made him say He didn’t mean anything by it; 
only the honourable sir did not know what it was to be 
ruined, broken down, trampled upon. After this introduc¬ 
tion he approached the matter near his heart, but in such 
a rambling, ejaculatory, craven fashion, that for a long time 
I couldn’t make out what he was driving at. He wanted 
me to intercede with Jim in his favour. It seemed, too, to 
be some sort of money affair. I heard time and again thf 
words, ‘ Moderate provision — suitable present/ He seemed 
to be claiming value for something, and he even w r ent the 
length of saying with some warmth that life was not worth 
having if a man were to be robbed of everything. I did not 
breathe a word, of course, but neither did I stop my ears. 
The gist of the affair, which became clear to me gradually, 
was in this, that he regarded himself as entitled to some 
money in exchange for the girl. He had brought her up. 
Somebody else’s child. Great trouble and pains - old man 


L.OED JIM 


SOT 


now — suitable present. If the honourable sir would say a 
word. ... I stood still to look at him with curiosity, and 
fearful lest I should think him extortionate, I suppose, he 
hastily brought himself to make a concession. In consider¬ 
ation of a 4 suitable present ’ given at once, he would, he 
declared, be willing to undertake the charge of the girl, 
4 without any other provision — when the time came for the 
gentleman to go home. , His little yellow face, all crumpled 
as though it had been squeezed together, expressed the 
most anxious, eager avarice. His voice whined coaxingly, 
4 Ho more trouble — natural guardian—a sum of money. . / 
44 I stood there and marvelled. That kind of thing, with 
him, was evidently a vocation. I discovered suddenly in 
his cringing attitude a sort of assurance, as though he had 
been all his life dealing in certitudes. He must have 
thought I was dispassionately considering his proposal, 
because he became as sweet as honey. 4 Every gentleman 
made a provision when the time came to go home/ he began 
insinuatingly. I slammed the little gate. 4 In this case, 
Mr. Cornelius/ I said, 4 the time shall never come/ He 
took a few seconds to gather this in. 4 What 1’ he fairly 
squealed. 4 Why/ I continued from my side of the gate, 
‘haven't you heard him say so himself ? He will never go 
home/ 4 Oh! this is too much/ he shouted. He would 
not address me as 4 honourable sir 9 any more. He was very 
3 till for a time, and then, without a trace of humility, began 
very low. ‘Never go — ah! He — he — he comes here 
devil knows from where — comes here — devil knows why 
— to trample on me till I die — ah — trample 9 (he stamped 
softly with both feet), ‘trample like this — nobody knows 
•why — till I die. . . / His voice became quite extinct; ho 
was bothered by a little cough; he came up close to the 
fence and told me, dropping into a confidential and piteous 


LORD JIM 


S08 

tone, that he would not be trampled upon. ‘Patience — 
patience/ he muttered, striking his breast. I had done 
laughing at him, but unexpectedly he treated me to a wild 
cracked burst of it. 4 Ha! ha! ha! We shall see! We 
shall see! What ? Steal from me ? Steal from me every¬ 
thing. Everything! EverythingHis head drooped on 
one shoulder, his hands were hanging before him lightly 
clasped. One would have thought he had cherished the 
girl with surpassing love, that his spirit had been crushed 
and his heart broken by the most cruel of spoliations. Sud¬ 
denly he lifted his head and shot out an infamous w T ord 
4 Like her mother—she is like her deceitful mother. 
Exactly. In her face, too. In her face. The devil ! 9 He 
leaned his forehead against the fence, and in that position 
uttered threats and horrible blasphemies in Portuguese in 
very weak ejaculations, mingled with miserable plaints and 
groans, coming out with a heave of the shoulders as though 
he had been overtaken by a deadly fit of sickness. It was 
an inexpressibly grotesque and vile performance, and I has¬ 
tened away. He tried to shout something after me. Some 
disparagement of Jim, I believe — not too loud, though, we 
were too near the house. All I heard distinctly was, ‘No 
more than a little child — a little child/ 


CHAPTER XXXV 

“ But next morning, at the first bend of the river shut¬ 
ting off the houses of Patusan, all this dropped out of my 
sight bodily, with its colour, its design, and its meaning, 
like a picture created by fancy on a canvas, upon which, 
after long contemplation, you turn your back for the last 
time. It remains in the memory motionless, unfaded, with 



LORD JIM 


309 

its life arrested, in an unchanging light. There are the 
ambitions, the fears, the hate, the hopes, and they remain 
in my mind just as I had seen them — intense and as if 
for ever suspended in their expression. I had turned away 
from the picture and was going back to the world where 
events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear 
stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones. I 
wasn’t going to dive into it; I would have enough to do to 
keep my head above the surface. But as to what I was 
leaving behind, I cannot imagine any alteration. The im¬ 
mense and magnanimous Doramin and his little motherly 
witch of a wife, gazing together upon the land and nursing 
secretly their dreams of parental ambition; Tunku Allang, 
wizened and greatly perplexed; Dain Waris, intelligent 
and brave, with his faith, in Jim, with his firm glance and 
his ironic friendliness; the girl, absorbed in her frightened, 
suspicious adoration; Tamb’ Itam, surly and faithful; Cor¬ 
nelius, leaning his forehead against the fence under the 
moonlight — I am certain of them. They exist as if under 
an enchanter’s wand. But the figure round which all these 
are grouped — that one lives, and I am not certain of him. 
Ho magician’s wand can immobilise him under my eyes. 
He is one of us. 

“ Jim, as I’ve told you, accompanied me on the first stage 
of my journey back to the world he had renounced, and 
the way at times seemed to lead through the very heart of 
untouched wilderness. The empty reaches sparkled under 
the high sun; between the high walls of vegetation the 
heat drowsed upon the water, and the boat, impelled 
vigorously, cut her way through the air that seemed to 
have settled dense and warm under the shelter of lofty 
trees. 

The shadow of the impending separation had already 


$10 


LORD JIM 


put an immense space between us, and when we spoke H 
was with an effort, as if to force our low voices across a 
vast and increasing distance. The boat fairly flew; we 
sweltered side by side in the stagnant superheated air; the 
smell of mud, of marsh, the primeval smell of fecund earth, 
seemed to sting our faces ; till suddenly at a bend it was as 
if a great hand far away had lifted a heavy curtain, had 
flung open an immense portal. The light itself seemed to 
stir, the sky above our heads widened, a far-off murmur 
reached our ears, a freshness enveloped us, filled oui 
lungs, quickened our thoughts, our blood, our regrets — and, 
straight ahead, the forests sank down against the dark-blue 
ridge of the sea. 

“ I breathed deeply, I revelled in the vastness of the 
opened horizon, in the different atmosphere that seemed to 
vibrate with the toil of life, with the energy of an impec¬ 
cable world. This sky and this sea were open to me. The 
girl was right — there was a sign, a call in them — some¬ 
thing to which I responded with every fibre of my being. 
I let my eyes roam through space, like a man released 
from bonds who stretches his cramped limbs, runs, leaps, 
responds to the inspiring elation of freedom. i This is 
glorious ! 9 I cried, and then I looked at the sinner by my 
side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said 
4 Yes’ without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large 
on the clear sky of the offing the reproach of his romantic 
conscience. 

“ I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We 
landed on a bit of white beach. It was backed by a low 
cliff wooded on the brow, draped in creepers to the very 
foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of a serene and intense 
blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the thread-line 
Of the horizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great 


LORD JIM 


311 


waves of glitter blew lightly along the pitted dark sur» 
face, as swift as feathers chased by the breeze. A chain of 
islands sat broken and massive, facing the wide estuary, 
displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully 
the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine 
a solitary bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring 
above the same spot with a slight rocking motion of the 
wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy mat-hovels was 
perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked multi¬ 
tude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe 
put off from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, 
who toiled exceedingly, striking down at the pale water; 
and the canoe seemed to slide painfully on a mirror. This 
bunch of miserable hovels was the fishing village that 
boasted of the white lord’s especial protection, and the two 
men crossing over were the old headman and his son-in-law. 
They landed and walked up to us on the white sand, lean, 
dark-brown, as if dried in smoke, with ashy patches on the 
skin of their naked shoulders and breasts. Their heads 
were bound in dirty but carefully folded headkerchiefs, and 
the old man began at once to state a complaint, voluble, 
stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared 
eyes confidently. The Rajah’s people would not leave 
them alone; there had been some trouble about a lot of 
turtles’ eggs his people had collected on the islets there — 
and leaning at arm’s-length upon his paddle, he pointed 
with a brown skinny hand over the sea. Jim listened for a 
time without looking up, and at last told him gently to wait. 
He would hear him by and by. They withdrew obediently 
to some little distance, and sat on their heels, with their 
paddles lying before them on the sand; the silvery gleams 
in their eyes followed our movements patiently; and tha 
immensity of the outspread sea, the stillness of the coast. 


312 


LORD JIM 


passing north and south beyond the limits of my vision* 
made up one colossal Presence watching us four dwarfs 
isolated on a strip of glistening sand. 

“ ‘ The trouble is/ remarked Jim moodily, ‘that for gen¬ 
erations these beggars of fishermen in that village there 
had been considered as the Rajah’s personal slaves—and 
the old rip can’t get it into his head that . . 

“ He paused. ‘ That you have changed all that/ I said. 

“ ‘ Yes. I’ve changed all that/ he muttered in a gloomy 
voice. 

“ ‘ You have had your opportunity/ I pursued. 

“ ‘ Had I ? ’ he said. ‘ Well, yes. I suppose so. Yes. I 
have got back my confidence in myself — a good name — 
yet sometimes I wish ... Ho! I shall hold what I’ve 
got. Can’t expect anything more.’ He flung his arm out 
towards the sea. ‘Hot out there, anyhow.’ He stamped his 
foot upon the sand. ‘ This is my limit, because nothing 
less will do.’ 

“We continued pacing the beach. ‘Yes, I’ve changed 
all that/ he went on, with a sidelong glance at the two 
patient squatting fishermen; ‘ but only try to think what 
it would be if I went away. Jove! can’t you see it ? Hell 
,oose. Ho! To-morrow I shall go and take my chance 
of drinking that silly old Tunku Allang’s coffee, and I shall 
make no end of fuss over these rotten turtles’ eggs. Ho. 
I can’t say — enough. Hever. I must go on, go on for ever 
holding up my end, to feel sure that nothing can touch 
me. I must stick to their belief in me to feel safe and to 
— to’ . . . He cast about for a word, seemed to look for 
it on the sea . . ‘to keep in touch with’ . . . His 
voice sank suddenly to a murmur . . . ‘ with those whom, 
perhaps, I shall never see any more. With—with—you, 
for instance.’ 


LOKD JIM 


313 


“ I was profoundly humbled by his words. ‘ For God’s 
"^ke,’ I said, ‘ don’t set me up, my dear fellow; just look 
to yourself.’ I felt a gratitude, an affection, for that strag¬ 
gler whose eyes had singled me out, keeping my place in 
the ranks of an insignificant multitude. How little that 
was to boast of, after all! I turned my burning face 
away; under the low sun, glowing, darkened, and crim¬ 
son, like an ember snatched from the fire, the sea lay 
outspread, offering all its immense stillness to the ap¬ 
proach of the fiery orb. Twice he was going to speak, but 
checked himself; at last, as if he had found a formula — 

“‘1 shall be faithful,’ he said quietly. ‘ I shall be 
faithful,’ he repeated, without looking at me, but for the 
first time letting his eyes wander upon the waters, whose 
blueness had changed to a gloomy purple under the fires 
of sunset. Ah! he was romantic, romantic. I recalled 
some words of Stein’s. . . . ‘In the destructive element 
immerse! ... To follow the dream and again to follow 
the dream — and so — always — usque ad finern . . He 
was romantic, but none the less true. Who could tell what 
forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could 
see in the glow of the west! . . A small boat, leaving 

the schooner, moved slowly, with a regular beat of two 
oars, towards the sandbank to take me off. ‘And then 
there’s Jewel,’ he said, out of the great silence of earth, 
sky, and sea, which had mastered my very thoughts so that 
his voice made me start. ‘There’s Jewel.’ ‘Yes,’ I mur¬ 
mured. ‘ I need not tell you what she is to me,’ he pur¬ 
sued. ‘ You’ve seen. In time she will come to understand. 
. . .’ ‘I hope so,’ I interrupted. ‘She trusts me, too,* 
he mused, and then changed his tone. ‘When shall we 
meet next, I wonder ? ’ he said. 

“‘Never — unless you come out.’ I answered, avoiding 



LORD JIM 


$14 

his glance. He didn’t seem to be surprised ; he kept verj 
quiet for a while. 

“‘ Good-bye, then,’ he said, after a pause. ‘ Perhaps it’s 
just as well.’ 

“We shook hands, and I walked to the boat, which 
waited with her nose on the beach. The schooner, her 
mainsail set and jib-sheet to windward, curveted on the 
purple sea; there was a rosy tinge on her sails. ‘Will 
you be going home again soon ? ’ asked Jim, just as I swung 
my leg over the gunwale. ‘ In a year or so, if I live,’ I said. 
The forefoot grated on the sand, the boat floated, the wet 
oars flashed and dipped once, twice. Jim, at the water’s 
edge, raised his voice. ‘ Tell them . . .’ he began. I signed 
to the men to cease rowing, and waited in wonder. Tell 
who ? The half-submerged sun faced him; I could see its 
red gleam in his eyes that looked dumbly at me. . . . ‘No 
— nothing,’ he said, and with a slight wave of his hand 
motioned the boat away. I did not look again at the shore 
till I had clambered on board the schooner. 

“ By that time the sun had set. The twilight lay over 
the east, and the coast, turned black, extended infinitely its 
sombre wall that seemed the very stronghold of the night; 
the western horizon was one great blaze of gold and crimson 
in which a big detached cloud floated dark and still, casting 
a slaty shadow on the water beneath, and I saw Jim on the 
beach watching the schooner fall off and gather headway. 

“ The two half-naked fishermen had arisen as soon as I 
had gone; they were no doubt pouring the plaint of their 
trifling, miserable, oppressed lives into the ears of the white 
lord, and no doubt he was listening to it, making it his 
own, for was it not a part of his luck — the luck ‘ from the 
word Go’ — the luck to which he had assured me he was so 
completely equal. They too, I should think, were in luck, 


LORD JIM 


315 


And I was snre their pertinacity would be equal to it. Their 
dark-skinned bodies vanished on the dark background long 
before I had lost sight of their protector. He was white 
from head to foot, and remained persistently visible with 
the stronghold of the night at his back, the sea at his 
feet, the opportunity by his side — still veiled. What do 
you say ? Was it still veiled ? I don’t know. For me 
that white figure in the stillness of coast and sea seemed 
to stand at the heart of a vast enigma. The twilight was 
ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of sand 
bad sunk already under his feet, he himself appeared no 
bigger than a child — then only a speck, a tiny white speck, 
that seemed to catch all the light left in a darkened world. 

. . And, suddenly, I lost him. . . 


CHAPTER XXXVI 

With these words Marlow had ended his narrative, and 
his audience had broken up forthwith, under his abstract, 
pensive gaze. Men drifted off the verandah in pairs or 
alone without loss of time, without offering a remark, as if 
the last image of that incomplete story, its incompleteness 
itself, and the very tone of the speaker, had made discus¬ 
sion vain and comment impossible. Each of them seemed 
to carry away his own impression, to carry it away with 
him like a secret; but there was only one man of all these 
listeners who was ever to hear the last word of the story. 
It came to him at home, more than two years later, and it 
came contained in a thick packet addressed in Marlow’s 
upright and angular handwriting. 

The privileged man opened the packet, looked in, then, 
laying it down, went to the window. His rooms were in 






LORD JIM 


316 

the highest flat of a lofty building, and his glance could 
travel afar beyond the clear panes of glass, as though he 
were looking out of the lantern of a lighthouse. The 
slopes of the roofs glistened, the dark broken ridges suc¬ 
ceeded each other without end like sombre, uncrested 
waves, and from the depths of the town under his feet 
ascended a confused and unceasing mutter. The spires of 
churches, numerous, scattered haphazard, uprose like bea¬ 
cons on a maze of shoals without a channel; the driving rain 
mingled with the falling dusk of a winter’s evening; and 
the booming of a big clock on a tower striking the hour, 
rolled past in voluminous, austere bursts of sound, with 
a shrill vibrating cry at the core. He drew the heavy 
curtains. 

The light of his shaded reading-lamp slept like a shel¬ 
tered pool, his footfalls made no sound on the carpet, his 
wandering days were over. Ho more horizons as boundless 
as hope, no more twilights within the forests as solemn as 
temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscovered Country 
over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The 
hour was striking ! Ho more! Ho more! — but the 
opened packet under the lamp brought back the sounds, the 
visions, the very savour of the past — a multitude of fading 
faces, a tumult of low voices, dying away upon the shores 
of distant seas under a passionate and unconsoling sun¬ 
shine. He sighed and sat down to read. 

At first he saw three distinct enclosures. A good many 
pages closely blackened and pinned together; a loose, square 
sheet of greyish paper with a few words traced in a hand¬ 
writing he had never seen before, and an explanatory letter 
from Marlow. Erom this last fell another letter, yellowed 
by time and frayed on the folds. He picked it up and, lay¬ 
ing it aside, turned to Marlow’s message, ran swiftly over 


LORD JIM 


317 


the opening lines, and, checking himself, thereafter read on 
deliberately, like one approaching with slow feet and alert 
eyes the glimpse of an undiscovered country. 

«... I don’t suppose you’ve forgotten,” went on the 
letter. “You alone have showed an interest in him that 
survived the telling of his story, though I remember well 
you would not admit he had mastered his fate. You proph¬ 
esied for him the disaster of weariness and of disgust with 
acquired honour, with the self-appointed task, with the 
love sprung from pity and youth. You had said you knew 
so well ‘that kind of thing,’ its illusory satisfaction, its 
unavoidable deception. You said also — I call to mind — 
that ‘ giving your life up to them ’ (them, meaning all of 
mankind with skins brown, yellow, or black in colour) ‘ was 
like selling your soul to a brute. You contended that ‘ that 
kind of thing’ was only endurable and enduring when 
based on a firm conviction in the truth of ideas racially our 
own, in whose name are established the order, the moral¬ 
ity of an ethical progress. ‘We want its strength’ at our 
backs,’ you had said. ‘ We want a belief in its necessity 
and its justice, to make a worthy and conscious sacrifice of 
our lives. Without it the sacrifice is only forgetfulness, 
the way of offering is no better than the way to perdition.’ 
In other words, you maintained that we must fight in the 
ranks or our lives don’t count. Possibly! You ought to 
know — be it said without malice — you who have rushed 
into one or two places single-handed and come out cleverly, 
without singeing your wings. The point, however, is that, 
of all mankind, Jim had no dealings but with himself, and 
the question is whether at the last he had not confessed to 
a faith mightier than the laws of order and progress. 

“I affirm nothing. Perhaps you may pronounce — aftei 
you’ve read. There ™noh truth — after all — in the com- 


318 


LORD JIM 


mon expression ‘ under a cloud/ It is impossible to see him 
clearly — especially as it is through the eyes of others that 
we take our last look at him. I have no hesitation in im¬ 
parting to you all I know of the last episode that, as he 
used to say, had £ come to him/ One wonders whether this 
was perhaps that supreme opportunity, that last and satis¬ 
fying test for which I had always suspected him to be 
waiting, before he could frame a message to the impecca¬ 
ble world. You remember that when I was leaving him 
for the last time he had asked whether I would be going 
home soon, and suddenly cried after me, ‘ Tell them ! 9 . . . 
I had waited — curious, I’ll own, and hopeful, too — only to 
hear him shout, ‘No — nothing/ That was all then — and 
there shall be nothing more; there shall be no message, 
unless such as each of us can interpret for himself from 
the language of facts, that are so often more enigmatic 
than the craftiest arrangement of words. He made, it i 3 
true, one more attempt to deliver himself; but that too 
failed, as you may perceive if you look at the sheet of grey* 
ish foolscap enclosed here. He had tried to write; do you 
notice the commonplace hand ? It is headed ‘ The Fort, 
Patusan/ I suppose he had carried out his intention of 
making out of his house a place of defence. It was an 
excellent plan: a deep ditch, an earth-wall topped by a 
palisade, and at the angles guns mounted on platforms to 
sweep each side of the square. Doramin had agreed to 
furnish him the guns; and so each man of his party would 
know there was a place of safety, upon which every faith¬ 
ful partisan could rally in case of some sudden danger. 
All this showed his judicious foresight, his faith in the 
future. What he called ‘ my own people 9 — the liberated 
captives of the Sherif — were to make a distinct quarter of 
Patusan, with their huts and little plots of ground undet 


LORD JIM 


319 


%he walls of the stronghold. Within, he woulfl be an in* 
^incible host in himself. ‘The Fort, Patusan.' No date, 
as you observe. What is a number and a name to a day 
of days ? It is also impossible to say whom fie had in his 
mind when he seized the pen: Stein — myself — the world 
at large — or was this only the aimless,, startled cry of a 
solitary man confronted by his fate ? ' An awful thing has 
happened/ he wrote before he flung the pen down for the 
first time; look at the ink blot resembling the head of an 
arrow under these words. After a while he had tried again, 
scrawling heavily, as if with a hand of lead, another line. 
‘ I must now at once . . / The pen had spluttered, and 
that time he gave it up. There’s nothing more; he had 
seen a broad gulf that neither eye nor voice could span. 
I can understand this. He was overwhelmed by the inex¬ 
plicable; he was overwhelmed by his own personality — 
the gift of that destiny which he had done his best to 
master. 

“I send you also an old letter — a very old letter. It 
was found carefully preserved in his writing-case. It is 
from his father, and by the date you can see he must have 
received it a few days before he joined the Patna. Thus 
it must be the last letter he ever had from home. He had 
treasured it all these years. The good old parson fancied 
his sailor-son. I’ve looked in at a sentence here and there. 
There is nothing in it except just affection. He tells his 
‘dear James’ that the last long letter from him was very 
‘honest and entertaining.’ He would not have him ‘judge 
men harshly or hastily.’ There are four pages of it, easy 
morality and family news. Tom had ‘ taken orders.’ Car¬ 
rie’s husband had ‘money losses.’ The old chap goes 
on equably trusting Providence and the established order 
of the universe, but alive to its small dangers and its small 



320 


LORD JIM 


mercies. One can almost see him, grey-haired and serene^ 
in the inviolable shelter of his book-lined, faded, and com¬ 
fortable study, where for forty years he had conscientiously 
gone over and over again the round of his little thoughts 
about faith and virtue, about the conduct of life and the 
only proper manner of dying; where he had written so 
many sermons, where he sits talking to his boy, over there, 
on the other side of the earth. But what of the distance. 
Virtue is one all over the world, and there is only one faith, 
one conceivable conduct of life, one manner of dying. He 
hopes his ‘ dear James ’ will never forget that‘ who once 
gives way to temptation, in the very instant hazards his 
total depravity and everlasting ruin. Therefore resolve 
fixedly, never, through any possible motives, to do anything 
which you believe to be wrong.’ There is also some news 
of a favourite dog; and a pony, * which all you boys used 
to ride,’ had gone blind from old age and had to be shot. 
The old chap invokes Heaven’s blessing; the mother and 
all the girls then at home send their love. . . . No, there is 
nothing much in that yellow frayed letter fluttering out of 
his cherishing grasp after so many years. It was never 
answered, but who can say what converse he may have held 
with all these placid, colourless forms of men and women 
peopling that quiet corner of the world as free of danger or 
strife as a tomb, and breathing equably the air of undis¬ 
turbed rectitude. It seems amazing that he should belong 
to it, he to whom so many things ‘had come.’ Nothing 
ever came to them; they would never be taken unawares, 
and never be called upon to grapple with fate. Here they 
all are, evoked by the mild gossip of the father, all these 
brothers and sisters, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, 
gazing with clear, unconscious eyes, while I seem to see 
him, returned at last, no longer a mere white speck at the 


LORD JIM 


32 i 


• *eart of an immense mystery, but of full stature, standing dis¬ 
regarded amongst their untroubled shapes, with a stern and 
romantic aspect, but always mute, dark — under a cloud. 

“The story of the last events you shall find in the few 
pages enclosed here. You must admit that it is romantic 
beyond the wildest dreams of his boyhood, and yet there is 
to my mind a sort of profound and terrifying logic in it, as 
if it were our imagination alone that could set loose upon 
us the might of an overwhelming destiny. The imprudence 
of our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with the 
sword shall perish by the sword. This astounding adven¬ 
ture, of which the most astounding part is that it is true, 
comes on as an unavoidable necessity. Something of the 
sort had to happen. You repeat this to yourself while you 
marvel that such a thing could happen in the year of grace 
before last. But it has happened— and there is no disputing 
its logic. 

“I relate it for you as though I had been an eye-witness. 
My information was fragmentary, but I put the pieces 
together, and there is enough of them to make an intelli¬ 
gible picture. I wonder how he would have related it 
himself. He has confided so much in me that at times it 
seems as though he must come in presently and tell the 
story in his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, 
with his off-hand manner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, 
a little hurt, but now and then by a word or a phrase giv¬ 
ing one of these glimpses of his very own self that were 
never any good for purposes of orientation. It’s difficult 
to believe he will never come. I shall never hear his voice 
again, nor shall I see his smooth tan-and-pink face with a 
white line on the forehead, and the youthful eyes darkened 
by excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue.” 


322 


LORD JIM 


CHAPTER XXXVII 

“ It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called 
Brown, who stole with complete success a Spanish schooner 
out of a small bay near Zamboanga. Till I discovered the 
fellow my information was incomplete; but most unex¬ 
pectedly I did come upon him a few hours before he gave 
up his arrogant ghost. Fortunately, he was willing and 
able to talk between the choking fits of asthma, and his 
racked body writhed with malicious exultation at the bare 
thought of Jim. He exulted thus at the idea that he had 
‘paid out the stuck-up beggar, after all.’ He gloated over 
his action. I had to oear the sunken glare of his fierce 
crow-foot eyes if I wanted to know; and so I bore it, re¬ 
flecting how much certain forms of evil are akin to mad* 
ness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by resistance, 
tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to 
the body. The story also reveals unsuspected depths of 
cunning in the wretched Cornelius, whose abject and in¬ 
tense hate acts like a subtle inspiration, pointing out an 
unerring way towards revenge. 

“ ‘ I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of 
a fool he was/ gasped the dying Brown. ‘He a man! 
Hell! He was a hollow sham. As if he couldn’t have 
said straight out, “ Hands off my plunder! ” blast him! 
That would have been like a man! Rot his superior soul! 
He had me there — but he hadn’t devil enough in him to 
make an end of me. Not he! A thing like that letting 
me off as if I wasn’t worth a kick! . . .’ Brown struggled 
desperately for breath. . . ‘Fraud. . . . Letting me off. 
. . . And so I did make an end of him, after all. . . / Ha 
choked again. . . . ‘ I expect this thing ’ll kill me, but T 




LORD JIM 


323 


shall die easy now. You . . . you here. ... I don’t know 
your name — I would give you a five-pound note if — if I 
had it — for the news — or my name’s not Brown. . . 
He grinned horribly. . . . ‘ Gentleman Brown.’ 

“He said all these things in profound gasps, staring at 
me with his yellow eyes out of a long, ravaged, brown face; 
he jerked his left arm; a pepper-and-salt matted beard 
hung almost into his lap; a dirty, ragged blanket covered 
his legs. I had found him out in Bankok through that 
busybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had, confiden¬ 
tially, directed me where to look. It appears that a sort 
of loafing, fuddled vagabond — a white man living amongst 
the natives with a Siamese woman — had considered it 
a great privilege to give a shelter to the last days of 
the famous Gentleman Brown. While he was talking to 
me in the wretched hovel, and, as it were, fighting for 
every minute of his life, the Siamese woman, with big bare 
legs and a stupid coarse face, sat in a dark corner chewing 
betel stolidly. Now and then she would get up for the 
purpose of shooing a chicken away from the door. The 
whole hut shook when she walked. An ugly yellow child, 
naked and pot-bellied like a little heathen god, stood at the 
foot of the couch, finger in mouth, lost in a profound and 
calm contemplation of the dying man. 

“ He talked feverishly, with a gleeful ferocity and a sav¬ 
age, unforgiving contempt for poor Jim j but in the middle 
of a word, perhaps, an invisible hand would take him by 
the throat, and he would look at me dumbly with a heaving 
breast and an expression of doubt and anguish. You could 
see his coarse lips turn blue behind the drooping, wiry 
hairs. He seemed to fear that I would get tired of wait¬ 
ing for the end of the choking-fit and go away, leaving 
him with his tale untold, with his exultation unexpressed. 





324 


LORD JIM 


Nothing was farther from my thoughts ; I was only afraid 
that death, hovering over him, would swoop down suddenly 
and baffle my desire to know. He died during the night, 
I believe, but by that time I had nothing more to learn. 

“ I knew the story before, of course; he had only cleared 
up an obscure point, though the profound blackness of the 
act cannot be dispelled. 

“ So much as to Brown, for the present. 

“ Eight months before this, coming into Samarang, I 
went as usual to see Stein. On the garden side of the 
house a Malay on the verandah greeted me shyly, and I 
remembered that I had seen him in Patusan, in Jim’s 
house, amongst other Bugis men who used to come in the 
evening to talk interminably over their war reminiscences 
and to discuss State affairs. Jim had pointed him out to 
me once as a respectable petty trader owning a small sea* 
going native craft, who had showed himself ‘ one of the best 
at the taking of the stockade.’ I was not very surprised 
to see him, since any Patusan trader venturing as far as 
Samarang would naturally find his way to Stein’s house. 
I returned his greeting and passed on. At the door of 
Stein’s room I came upon another Malay in whom I recog¬ 
nised Tamb’ Itam. 

“ I asked him at once what he was doing there; it 
occurred to me that Jim might have come on a visit. I 
own I was pleased and excited at the thought. Tamb’ 
Itam looked as if he did not know what to say. ‘ Is 
Tuan Jim inside?’ I asked impatiently. ‘No,’ he mum¬ 
bled, hanging his head for a moment, and then with 
sudden earnestness, ‘He would not fight. He would not 
fight,’ he repeated twice. As he seemed unable to say 
anything else, I pushed him aside and went in. 

“ Stein, tall and stooping, stood alone in the middle o! 


LOKD JIM 


325 


*he room, between the rows of butterfly cases. ‘Ach! is 
it you, my friend?’ he said sadly, peering through his 
glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca hung, unbuttoned, 
down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his head, 
and there were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. ‘ What’s 
the matter now ?’ I asked nervously. ‘ There’s Tamb’ 
Itam there. . . . ’ ‘ Come and see the girl. Come and 
see the girl. She is here,’ he said, with a half-hearted 
show of activity. I tried to detain him, but with gen¬ 
tle obstinacy he would take no notice of my eager ques¬ 
tions. ‘ She is here, she is here,’ he repeated in great 
perturbation. ‘They came here two days ago. An old 
man like me, a stranger — sehen sie —cannot do much. 

. . . Come this way. . . . Young hearts are forgiving. 
. . . ’ I could see he was in utmost distress. . . . ‘ The 
strength of life in them, the cruel strength of life. . . . ’ 
He mumbled, leading me round the house; I followed 
him, lost in dismal and angry conjectures. At the door 
of the drawing-room he barred my way. ‘He loved her 
very much,’ he said interrogatively, and I only nod¬ 
ded, feeling so bitterly disappointed that I would not 
trust myself to speak. ‘Very frightful,’ he murmured. 
‘ She can’t understand me. I am only a strange old man. 
Perhaps you . . . she knows you. Talk to her. We can’t 
leave it like this. Tell her to forgive him. It was very 
frightful.’ ‘Ho doubt,’ I said, exasperated at being in the 
dark; ‘but have you forgiven him?’ He looked at me 
queerly. ‘You shall hear,’ he said, and opening the door, 
absolutely pushed me in. 

“You know Stein’s big house and the two immense 
reception-rooms, uninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full 
of solitude and of shining things that look as if never 
beheld by the eye of man ? They are cool on the hot 



326 


LORD JIM 


test days, and you enter them as you would a scrubbed 
cave underground. I passed through one, and in the 
other I saw the girl sitting at the end of a big mahog¬ 
any table, on which she rested her head, the face hidden 
in her arms. The waxed floor reflected her dimly as 
though it had been a sheet of frozen water. The rattan 
screens were down, and through the strange greenish gloom 
made by the foliage of the trees outside a strong wind 
blew in gusts, swaying the long draperies of windows and 
doorways. Her white figure seemed shaped in snow; the 
pendent crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her 
head like glittering icicles. She looked up and watched my 
approach. I was chilled as if these vast apartments had 
been the cold abode of despair. 

“ She recognised me at once, and as soon as I had stopped 
looking down at her: ‘He has left me , 5 she said quietly; 
‘you always leave us — for your own ends . 5 Her face was 
set. All the heat of life seemed withdrawn within some 
inaccessible spot in her breast. ‘ It would have been easy 
to die with him , 5 she went on, and made a slight weary 
gesture as if giving up the incomprehensible. ‘ He would 
not! It was like a blindness — and it was I who was 
speaking to him; it was I who stood before his eyes; it 
was at me that he looked all the time ! Ah! you are hard, 
treacherous, without truth, without compassion. What 
makes you so wicked? Or is it that you are all mad ? 5 

“I took her hand; it was inert, and when I dropped 
it it hung down to the floor. That indifference, more 
awful than tears, cries, and reproaches, seemed to defy 
time and consolation. You felt that it would never exhaust 
itself, and that nothing you could say would reach the seat 
of the still and benumbing pain. 

“Stein had told me, ‘You shall hear . 5 ... I did hear 


LORD JIM 


327 


I heard it all, listening with amazement, with awe, to 
the tones of her inflexible weariness. She could not grasp 
the real sense of what she was telling me, and her resent¬ 
ment filled me with pity for her — for him, too. I stood 
rooted to the spot after she had finished. Leaning on her 
arm, she stared with hard eyes, and the wind passed in 
gusts, the crystals kept on clicking in the greenish gloom. 
She went on whispering to herself: ‘ And yet he was look¬ 
ing at me! He could see my face, hear my voice, hear my 
grief! When I used to sit at his feet, with my cheek 
against his knee and his hand on my head, the curse of 
cruelty and madness was already within him, waiting 
for the day. The day came! . . . and before the sun 
had set he could not see me any more — he was made 
blind and deaf and without pity, as you all are. He shall 
have no tears from me. Never, never. Not one tear. I 
will not! He went away from me as if I had been worse 
than death. He fled as if driven by some accursed thing 
he had heard or seen in his sleep. . . . J 

“Her steady eyes seemed to strain after the shape of 
a man torn out of her arms by the strength of a dream. 
She made no sign to my silent bow. I was glad to escape. 

“ I saw her once again, the same afternoon. On leav¬ 
ing her I had gone ki search of Stein, whom I could not 
find indoors; and I wandered out, pursued by distress¬ 
ful thoughts, into the gardens, these famous gardens of 
Stein, in which you can find every plant and tree of 
tropical lowlands. I followed the course of the canalised 
stream, and sat for a long time on a shaded bench near 
the ornamental pond, where some waterfowl with clipped 
wings were diving and splashing noisily. The branches 
of casuarina trees behind me swayed slightly, incessantly, 
reminding me of the soughing of the fir trees at home. 


32 8 


LORD JIM 


“ This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompani¬ 
ment to my meditations. She had said he had been driven 
away from her by a dream, and there was no answer one 
could make her — there seemed to be no forgiveness for 
such a transgression. And yet is not mankind itself, push¬ 
ing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and 
its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and ex¬ 
cessive devotion ? And what is the pursuit of truth — 
after all ? 

“ When I rose to get back to the house I caught sight of 
Stein’s drab coat through a gap in the foliage, and very 
soon at a turn of the path I came upon him walking with 
the girl. Her little hand rested on his forearm, and under 
the broad, flat rim of his Panama hat he bent over her, 
grey-haired, paternal, with compassionate and chivalrous 
deference. I stood aside, but they stopped, facing me. His 
gaze was bent on the ground at his feet; the girl, erect and 
slight on his arm, stared sombrely beyond my shoulder 
with big, clear, motionless eyes. ‘ Schrecldich,’ he mur¬ 
mured. ‘ Terrible! Terrible ! What can one do ? ’ He 
seemed to be appealing to me, but her youth, the length of 
days suspended over her head, appealed to me more; and 
suddenly, even as I realised that nothing could be said, I 
found myself pleading his cause for her sake. ‘ You must 
forgive him,’ I concluded, and my own voice seemed to me 
muffled, lost in an irresponsive deaf immensity. ‘We all 
want to be forgiven,’ I added, after a while. 

“ ‘ What have I done ? ’ she asked with her lips only. 

“‘ You always mistrusted him,’ I said. 

“ ‘ He was like the others,’ she pronounced slowly. 

“‘Not like the others,’ I protested, but she continued 
evenly, without any feeling — 

“‘He was false.’ And suddenly Stein broke in ‘No? 


LORD JIM 


329 


no! no ! My poor child! . . .’ He patted her hand lying 
passively on his sleeve. ‘No! no! Not false! True! 
true! true ! ’ He tried to look into her stony face. ‘ You 
don’t understand. Ach! Why you do not understand ? 
. . . Terrible,’ he said to me. ‘ Some day she shall under¬ 
stand.’ 

“ ‘ Will you explain ? ’ I asked, looking hard at him. 
They moved on. 

“I watched them. Her gown trailed on the path, her 
black hair fell loose. She walked upright and light by the 
side of the tall man, whose long, shapeless coat hung in 
perpendicular folds from the stooping shoulders, whose 
feet moved slowly. They disappeared beyond that spin- 
ney (you may remember) where sixteen different kinds of 
bamboo grow together, all distinguishable to the learned 
eye. For my part, I was fascinated by the exquisite grace 
and beauty of that fluted grove, crowned with pointed 
leaves and feathery heads, the lightness, the vigour, the 
charm as distinct as a voice of that unperplexed luxuriating 
life. I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as 
one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The 
sky was pearly grey. It was one of these overcast days 
so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one, 
memories of other shores, of other faces. 

“ I drove back to town the same afternoon, taking with 
me Tamb’ Itam and the other Malay, in whose sea-going 
craft they had escaped in the bewilderment, fear, and 
gloom of the disaster. The shock of it seemed to have 
changed their natures. It had turned her passion into 
stone, and it made the surly, taciturn Tamb’ Itam almost 
loquacious. His surliness, too, was subdued into puzzled 
humility, as though he had seen the failure of a potent 
charm in a supreme moment. The Bugis trader, a .<?hy 





330 


LORD JIM 


hesitating man, was very clear in the little he had to say. 
Both were evidently overawed by a sense of deep, inex. 
pressible wonder, by the touch of an inscrutable mystery / 5 
There with Marlow’s signature the letter proper ended. 
The privileged reader screwed up his lamp, and solitary 
above the billowy roofs of the town, like a lighthouse* 
keeper above the sea, he turned to the pages of the story. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 

“It all begins, as I’ve told you, with the man called 
Brown,” ran the opening sentence of Marlow’s narrative. 
“ You who have knocked about in the Western Pacific 
must have heard of him. He was the show ruffian on the 
Australian coast, not that he was often to be seen there, 
but because he was always trotted out in the stories of 
lawless life a visitor from home is treated to; and the 
mildest of these stories which were told about him from 
Cape York to Eden Bay was more than enough to hang 
a man if told in the right place. They never failed to tell 
you he was supposed to be the son of a baronet. Be it as it 
may, it is certain he had deserted from a home ship in the 
early gold-digging days, and in a few years became talked 
about as the terror of this or that group of islands in Poly« 
nesia. He would kidnap natives, he would strip some 
lonely white trader to the very pyjamas he stood in, and 
after he had robbed the poor devil, he would as likely as 
not invite him to fight a duel with shotguns on the beach, 
which would have been fair enough as these things go, if 
the other man hadn’t been by that time already half-dead 
with fright. Brown was a latter-day buccaneer, sorry 
enough, like his more celebrated prototypes; but what dis* 



LORD JIM 


331 


languished him from his contemporary brother ruffians, like 
Bully Hayes or the mellifluous Pease, or that perfumed, 
Dundreary-whiskered, dandified scoundrel known as Dirty 
Dick, was the arrogant temper of his misdeeds and a vehe¬ 
ment scorn for mankind at large and for his victims in par- 
ticular. The others were merely vulgar and greedy brutes, 
but he seemed moved by some complex intention. He 
would rob a man as if only to demonstrate his poor opinion 
of the creature, and he would bring to the shooting or 
maiming of some quiet, unoffending stranger a savage and 
vengeful earnestness fit to terrify the most reckless of 
desperadoes. In the days of his greatest glory he owned 
an armed barque, manned by a mixed crew of Kanakas and 
runaway whalers, and boasted, I don’t know with what 
truth, of being financed on the quiet by a most respectable 
firm of copra merchants. Later on he ran off — it was 
reported — with the wife of a missionary, a very young 
girl from Clapham way, who had married the mild, flat- 
footed fellow in a moment of enthusiasm, and suddenly 
transplanted to Melanesia, lost her bearings, somehow. It 
was a dark story. She was ill at the time he carried her 
off, and died on board his ship. It is said — as the most 
wonderful part of the tale — that over her body he gave 
way to an outburst of sombre and violent grief. His luck 
left him, too, very soon after. He lost his ship on some 
rocks off Malaita, and disappeared for a time as though he 
: had gone down with her. He is heard of next at Nuka- 
Hiva, where he bought an old French schooner out of 
Government service. What creditable enterprise he might 
have had in view when he made that purchase I can’t say. 
but it is evident that what with High Commissioners, con¬ 
suls, men-of-war, and international control, the South Seas 
were getting too hot to hold gentlemen of his kidney. 




332 


LORD JIM 


Clearly, he must have shifted the scene of his operations 
farther west; because a year later he plays an incredibly 
audacious, but not a very profitable part, in a serio-comic 
business in Manila Bay, in which a peculating governor 
and an absconding treasurer are the principal figures; 
thereafter he seems to have hung around the Philippines in 
his rotten schooner, battling with an adverse fortune, till at 
last, running his appointed course, he sails into Jim’s history, 
a blind accomplice of the Dark Powers. 

“ His tale goes that when a Spanish patrol-cutter cap¬ 
tured him he was simply trying to run a few guns for the 
insurgents. If so, then I can’t understand what he was 
doing off the south coast of Mindanao. My belief, however, 
is that he was blackmailing the native villages along the 
coast. The principal thing is that the cutter, throwing a 
guard on board, made him sail in company towards Zambo¬ 
anga. On the way, for some reason or other, both vessels 
had to come-to off one of these new Spanish settlements — 
which never came to anything in the end — where there 
was not only a civil official in charge on shore, but a good 
stout coasting schooner lying at anchor in the little bay; 
and this craft, in every way much better than his own, 
Brown made up his mind to steal. 

“ He was down on his luck—as he told me himself. The 
world he had bullied for twenty years with fierce, aggres¬ 
sive disdain, had yielded him nothing in the way of mate¬ 
rial advantage except a small bag of silver dollars, which 
was concealed in his cabin so that ‘the devil himself 
couldn’t smell it out.’ And that was all — absolutely all. 
He was tired of his life, and not afraid of death. But this 
man, who would stake his existence on a whim, with a 
bitter and jeering recklessness, was mortally afraid of a 
prison. He had an unreasoning cold-sweat, nerve-shaking, 


LORD JIM 


333 


blood-to-water-turning sort of horror at the bare possibility 
of being locked up—the sort of fear a superstitious man 
would feel at the thought of being embraced by a spectre. 
Therefore, the civil official who came on board to make a 
preliminary investigation into the capture, investigated 
arduously all day long, and only went ashore after dark, 
muffled up in a cloak, and taking great care not to let 
Brown’s dollars clink in their bag. Afterwards, being a 
man of his word, he contrived, the very next evening, to 
send off the Government cutter on some urgent bit of special 
service. As her commander could not spare a prize crew, 
he contented himself by taking away before he left all the 
sails of Brown’s schooner to the very last rag, and towed 
his two boats on to the beach a couple of miles off. 

“ But in Brown’s crew there was a Solomon Islander, kid¬ 
napped in his youth and devoted to Brown, who was the 
best man of the whole gang. That fellow swam off to the 
coaster — five hundred yards or so — with the end of a warp 
made up of all the running gear unrove for the purpose. 
The water was smooth, and the bay dark, i like the inside 
of a cow.’ as Brown described it. The Solomon Islander 
clambered over the bulwarks with the end of the rope in his 
teeth. The crew of the coaster — all Tagals — were ashore 
having a jollification in the native village. The two ship- 
keepers left on board woke up and saw the devil. It had 
glittering eyes and leaped quick as lightning about the 
deck. They fell on their knees, paralysed with fear, cross¬ 
ing themselves and mumbling prayers. With a knife he 
found in the caboose the Solomon Islander, without inter¬ 
rupting their orisons, stabbed first one, then the other; with 
the same knife he set to sawing patiently at the coir cable 
till suddenly it parted under the blade with a splash. Then, 
in the silence of the bay, he let out a cautious shout, and 


834 


LORD JIM 


Brown’s gang, who meantime had been peering and strain¬ 
ing their hopeful ears in the darkness, began to pull gently 
at their end of the warp. In less than five minutes the two 
schooners came together with a slight shock and a creak of 
spars. 

“Brown’s crowd transferred themselves without losing 
an instant, taking with them their firearms and a large 
supply of ammunition. They were sixteen in all: two 
runaway blue-jackets, a lanky deserter from a Yankee mam 
of-war, a couple of simple, blond Scandinavians, a mulatto 
of sorts, one bland Chinaman who cooked — and the rest of 
the nondescript spawn of the South Seas. None of them 
cared; Brown bent them to his will, and Brown, indifferent 
to the gallows, was running away from the spectre of a 
Spanish prison. He didn’t give them the time to trans- 
ship enough provisions; the weather was calm, the air was 
charged with dew, and when they cast off the ropes and set 
sail to a faint off-shore draught there was no flutter in the 
damp canvas; their old schooner seemed to detach itself 
gently from the stolen craft and slip away silently, together 
with the black mass of the coast, into the night. 

“ They got clear away. Brown related to me in detail 
their passage down the Straits of Macassar. It is a har¬ 
rowing and desperate story. They were short of food and 
water; they boarded several native craft and got % a littl« 
from each. With a stolen ship Brown did not dare to put 
into any port, of course. He had no money to buy any¬ 
thing, no papers to show, and no lie plausible enough to 
get him out again. An Arab barque, under the Dutch flag, 
surprised one night at anchor off Poulo Laut, yielded a 
little dirty rice, a bunch of bananas, and a cask of water; 
three days of squally, misty weather from the northeast 
shot the schooner across the J ava Sea. The yellow, muddy 



LORD JIM 


335 


waves drenched that collection of hungry ruffians. They 
sighted mail-boats moving on their appointed routes; 
passed well-found home ships with rusty iron sides an 
chored in the shallow sea waiting for a change of weather 
or the turn of the tide; an English gunboat, white and 
trim, with two slim masts, crossed their bows one day in 
the distance; and on another occasion a Dutch corvette, 
black and heavily sparred, loomed up on their quarter, 
steaming dead slow in the mist. They slipped through 
unseen or disregarded, a wan, sallow-faced band of utter out¬ 
casts, enraged with hunger and hunted by fear. Brown’s idea 
was to make for Madagascar, where he expected, on grounds 
not altogether illusory, to sell the schooner in Tamatave, and 
no questions asked, or perhaps obtain some more or less forged 
papers for her. Yet before he could face the long passage 
across the Indian Ocean food was wanted — water too. 

“ Perhaps he had heard of Patusan — or perhaps he just 
only happened to see the name written in small letters on 
the chart — probably that of a largish village up a river in 
a native state, perfectly defenceless, far from the beaten 
tracks of the sea and from the ends of submarine cables. 
He had done that kind of thing before — in the way of 
business; and this now was an absolute necessity, a ques¬ 
tion of life and death — or rather of liberty. Of liberty! 
He was sure to get provisions — bullocks — rice — sweet- 
potatoes. The sorry gang licked their chops. A cargo of 
produce for the schooner perhaps could be extorted — and, 
who knows — some real, ringing, coined money! Some of 
these chiefs and village headmen can be made to part 
freely. He told me he would have roasted them rather 
than be baulked. I believe him. His men believed him, 
too. They didn’t cheer aloud, being a dumb pack, but 
made ready wolfishly. 


836 


LORD JIM 


“Luck served him as to weather. A few days of calm 
would have brought unmentionable horrors on board that 
schooner, but with the help of land and sea breezes, in less 
than a week after clearing the Sunda Straits, he anchored 
off the Batu Kring mouth within a pistol-shot of the fishing 
village. 

“Fourteen of them packed into the schooner’s long-boat 
(which was big, having been used for cargo-work) and 
started up the river, while two remained in charge of the 
schooner with food enough to keep starvation off for ten 
days. The tide and wind helped, and early one afternoon 
the big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way 
before the sea breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by four¬ 
teen assorted scarecrows glaring hungrily ahead, and finger¬ 
ing the breech-blocks of cheap rifles. Brown calculated 
upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They sailed 
in with the last of the flood; the Rajah’s stockade gave no 
sign; the first houses on both sides of the stream seemed 
deserted. A few canoes were seen up the reach in full 
flight. Brown was astonished at the size of the place. A 
profound silence reigned. The wind dropped between th€ 
houses; two oars were got out and the boat held on up¬ 
stream, the idea being to effect a lodgment in the centre of 
the town before the inhabitants could think of resistance. 

“It seems, however, that the headman of the fishing 
village at Batu Kring had managed to send off a timely 
warning. When the long-boat came abreast of the mosque 
(which Doramin had built: a structure with gables and 
roof finials of carved coral) the open space before it was 
full of people. A shout went up, and was followed by a 
clash of gongs all up the river. From a point above two 
little brass six-pounders were discharged, and the round 
shot came skipping down the empty reach, spirting glitter- 



LORD JIM 


337 


mg jets of water in the sunshine. In front of the mosque 
a shouting lot of men began firing in volleys that whipped 
athwart the current of the river; an irregular, rolling fusi- 
lade was opened on the boat from both banks, and Brown’s 
men replied with a wild, rapid fire. The oars had been 
got in. 

“ The turn of the tide at high water comes on very quick 
in that river, and the boat in mid-stream, nearly hidden in 
smoke, began to drift back, stern foremost. Along both 
shores the smoke thickened also, lying below the roofs in a 
level streak as you may see a long cloud cutting the slope of 
a mountain. A tumult of war-cries, the vibrating clang of 
gongs, the deep snoring of drums, yells of rage, crashes 
of volley-firing, made an awful din, in which Brown sat 
confounded but steady at the tiller, working himself into a 
fury of hate and rage against those people who dared to de¬ 
fend themselves. Two of his men had been wounded, and 
he saw his retreat cut off below the town by some boats 
that had put off from Tunku Allang’s stockade. There 
were six of them full of men. While he was thus beset he 
perceived the entrance of the narrow creek (the same which 
Jim had jumped at low water). It was then brim full. 
Steering the long-boat in, they landed, and to make a long 
Story short, they established themselves on a little knoll 
about 900 yards from the stockade, which, in fact, they 
commanded from that position. The slopes of the knoll 
were bare, but there were a few trees on the summit. They 
went to work cutting these down for a breastwork, and were 
fairly intrenched before dark; meantime the Rajah’s boats 
remained in the river with curious neutrality. When the 
sun set the glare of many brushwood blazes lighted on the 
river-front, and between the double line of houses on the land 
side threw into black relief the roofs, the groups of slender 



338 


LORD JIM 


palms, the heavy clumps of fruit trees. Brown ordered the 
grass round his position to be fired; a low ring of thin 
flames under the slow ascending smoke wriggled rapidly 
down the slopes of the knoll; here and there a dry bush 
caught with a tall, vicious roar. The conflagration made a 
clear zone of fire for the rifles of the small party, and ex¬ 
pired smouldering on the edge of the forests and along the 
muddy bank of the creek. A strip of jungle luxuriating in 
a damp hollow between the knoll and the Rajah’s stockade 
stopped it on that side with a great crackling and detona¬ 
tions of bursting bamboo stems. The sky was sombre, 
velvety, and swarming with stars. The blackened ground 
smoked quietly with low, creeping wisps, till a little breeze 
came on and blew everything away. Brown expected an 
attack to be delivered as soon as the tide had flowed enough 
again to enable the war-boats which had cut off his retreat 
to enter the creek. At any rate, he was sure there would be 
an attempt to carry off his long-boat, which lay below the 
hill, a dark, high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet mud-flat. 
But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the 
river. Over the stockade and the Rajah’s buildings Brown 
saw their lights on the water. They seemed to be anchored 
across the stream. Other lights afloat were moving in the 
reach, crossing and recrossing from side to side. There 
were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls 
of houses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still 
beyond, others isolated inland. The loom of the big fires 
disclosed buildings, roofs, black piles as far as he could see. 
It was an immense place. The fourteen desperate invaders 
lying flat behind the felled trees raised their chins to look 
over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend up river 
for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men. The 3 T 
did not speak to each other- Now and then they would 


LORD JIM 


339 


hear a loud yell, or a single shot rang out, fired very far 
somewhere. But round their position everything was still, 
dark, silent. They seemed to be forgotten, as if the excite¬ 
ment keeping awake all the population had nothing to do 
With them, as if they had been dead already.” 


CHAPTER XXXIX 

“ All the events of that night have a great importance, 
since they brought about a situation which remained 
unchanged till Jim’s return. Jim had been away in the 
interior for more than a week, and it was Dain Waris who 
had directed the first repulse. That brave and intelligent 
youth (‘ who knew how to fight after the manner of white 
men ’) wished to settle the business off-hand, but his people 
were too much for him. He had not Jim’s racial prestige 
and the reputation of invincible, supernatural power. He 
was not the visible, tangible incarnation of unfailing truth 
and of* unfailing victory. Beloved, trusted, and admired 
as he was, he was still one of them, while Jim was one of 
us. Moreover, the white man, a tower of strength in him¬ 
self, was invulnerable, while Dain Waris could be killed. 
Those unexpressed thoughts guided the opinions of the 
chief men of the town who elected to assemble in Jim’s 
fort for deliberation upon the emergency as if to draw 
strength from the spirit of the absent white man. Their 
temper was unforgiving. The Bugis especially were exas¬ 
perated. The shooting of Brown’s ruffians was so far 
good and lucky that there had been half-a-dozen casualties 
amongst the defenders. The wounded were lying on the 
verandah tended by their women-folk. The women and 
children from the lower part of the town had been sent 



340 


LORD JIM 


into the fort at the first alarm. There Jewel was in corn* 
mand, very efficient and high-spirited, obeyed by Jim’s 
‘ own people/ who, quitting in a body their little settlement 
under the stockade, had gone in to form the garrison. 
The refugees crowded round her; and through the whole 
affair, to the very disastrous last, she showed an extraordi¬ 
nary martial ardour. It was to her that Dain Waris had 
gone at once at the first intelligence of danger, for you 
must know that Jim was the only one in Patusan who pos¬ 
sessed a store of gunpowder. Stein, with whom he had 
kept up intimate relations by letters, had obtained from 
the Dutch Government a special authorisation to export five 
hundred kegs of it to Patusan. The powder-magazine was 
a small hut of rough logs covered entirely with earth, and 
in Jim’s absence the girl had the key. In the council, held 
at eleven o’clock in the evening in Jim’s dining-room, she 
backed up Waris’s advice for immediate and vigorous 
action. I am told that she stood up by the side of Jim’s 
empty chair at the head of the long table and made a war¬ 
like, impassioned speech, which for the moment extorted 
murmurs of approbation from the assembled headmen. 
Old Doramin, who had not showed himself outside his own 
gate for more than a year, had been brought across with 
great difficulty. He was, of course, the chief man there. 
The temper of the council was very unforgiving, and the 
old man’s word would have been decisive; but it is my 
opinion that, well aware of his son’s fiery courage, he dared 
not pronounce the word. More dilatory counsels prevailed. 
A certain Haji Saman pointed out at great length that 
1 these tyrannical and ferocious men had delivered them¬ 
selves to a certain death in any case. They would stand 
fast on their hill and starve, or they would try to regain 
their boat and be shot from ambushes across the creek, or 


LORD JIM 


341 


they would break and fly into the forest and perish singly 
there.’ He argued that by the use of proper stratagems 
these evil-minded strangers could be destroyed without the 
risk of a battle, and his words had a great weight, especially 
with the Patusan men proper. What unsettled the minds 
of the town-folk was the failure of the Rajah’s boats to act 
at the decisive moment. It was the diplomatic Kassim 
who represented the Rajah at the council. He spoke very 
little, listened smilingly, very friendly and impenetrable. 
During the sitting messengers kept arriving every few 
minutes almost, with reports of the invaders’ proceedings. 
Wild and exaggerated rumours were flying: there was a 
large ship at the mouth of the river with big guns and 
many more men — some white, others savages with black 
skins and of bloodthirsty appearance. They were coming 
with many more boats to exterminate every living thing. 
A sense of near incomprehensible danger affected the com¬ 
mon folk. At one moment there was a panic in the court¬ 
yard amongst the women; shrieking; a rush; children 
crying — Haji Saman went out to quiet them. Then a fort 
sentry fired at something moving on the river, and nearly 
killed a villager bringing in his wornen-foik in a canoe 
together with the best of his domestic utensils and a dozen 
fowls. This caused more confusion. Meantime, the pala¬ 
ver inside Jim’s house went on in the presence of the girl. 
Doramin sat fierce-faced, heavy, looking at the speakers in 
turn, and breathing slow like a bull. He didn’t speak till 
the last, after Kassim had declared that the Rajah’s boats 
would be called in because the men were required to defend 
his master’s stockade. Dain Waris in his father’s pres¬ 
ence would offer no opinion, though the girl entreated him 
in Jim’s name to speak out. She offered him Jim’s own 
men, in her anxiety, to have these intruders driven out; a t 


342 


LORD JIM 


once. He only shook his head after a glance or two at 
Doramin, Finally, when the council broke up, it had been 
decided that the houses nearest the creek should be 
strongly occupied to obtain the command of the enemy’s 
boat. The boat itself was not to be interfered with openly 
so that the robbers on the hill should be tempted to em¬ 
bark, when a well-directed fire would kill most of them, no 
doubt. To cut the escape of those who might survive, and 
to prevent more of them coming up, Dain Waris was 
ordered by Doramin to take an armed party of Bugis down 
the river to a certain spot fifteen miles below Patusan, and 
there form a camp on the shore and blockade the stream 
with the canoes. I don’t believe for a moment that Dora¬ 
min feared the arrival of fresh forces. My opinion is that 
his conduct was guided solely by hie wish to keep his son 
out of harm’s way. To prevent a rush being made into the 
town the construction of a stockade was to be commenced 
at daylight at the end of the street on the left bank. The 
old nakhodci declared his intention to command there him¬ 
self. A distribution of powder, bullets, and percussion- 
caps was made immediately under the girl’s supervision 
Several messengers were to be dispatched in different direc- 
tions after Jim, whose exact whereabouts were unknown. 
These men started at dawn, but before that time Kassim 
had managed to open communications with the besieged 
Brown. 

“That accomplished diplomatist and confidant of the 
Rajah, on leaving the fort to go back to his master, took 
into his boat Cornelius, whom he found slinking mutely 
amongst the people in the courtyard. Kassim had a little 
plan of his own and wanted him for an interpreter. Thus 
it came about that towards morning Brown, reflecting upon 
the desperate nature of his position, heard from the marshy 





LORD JijvI 


343 


overgrown hollow an amicable, quavering, strained voice 
crying — in English for permission to come up, under a 
promise of personal safety and on a very important errand. 
He wa,s overjoyed. If he was spoken to he was no longer 
a hunted wild beast. These friendly sounds took off at 
once the awful stress of vigilant watchfulness as of so many 
blind men not knowing whence the deathblow might come. 
He pretended a great reluctance. The voice declared itself 
( a white man. A poor, ruined, old man who had been liv¬ 
ing here for years.* A mist, wet and chilly, lay on the 
slopes of the hill, and after some more shouting from one 
to the other, Brown called out, 1 Come on, then, but alone, 
mind! * As a matter of fact — he told me, writhing with 
rage at the recollection of his helplessness—it made no 
difference. They couldn’t see more than a few yards before 
them, and no treachery could make their position worse. 
By and by Cornelius, in his week-day attire of a ragged dirty 
shirt and pants, barefooted, with a broken-rim med pith hat 
on his head, was made out vaguely, sidling up to the de¬ 
fences, hesitating, stopping to listen in a peering posture. 
'Come along ! You are safe,* yelled Brown, while his men 
stared. All their hopes of life became suddenly centred in 
that dilapidated, mean newcomer, who in profound silence 
clambered clumsily over a felled tree-trunk, and shivering, 
with his sour, mistrustful face, looked about at the knot of 
bearded, anxious, sleepless desperadoes. 

“ Half an hour’s confidential talk with Cornelius opened 
Brown’s eyes as to the home affairs of Patusan. He was 
on the alert at once. There were possibilities; immense 
possibilities; but before he would talk over Cornelius’s propo* 
sals he demanded that some food should be sent up the hill 
as a guarantee of good faith. Cornelius went off, creeping 
sluggishly down the hill on the side of the Rajah’s place* 


344 


LORD JIM 


and after some delay a few of Tunku Allang’s men cam$ 
up, bringing a scanty supply of rice, chillies, and dried fisli. 
This was immeasurably better than nothing. Later on 
Cornelius returned, accompanying Kassim, who stepped 
out with an air of perfect good-humoured trustfulness, in 
sandals, and muffled up from neck to ankles in white sheet¬ 
ing. He shook hands with Brown discreetly, and the three 
drew aside for a conference. Brown’s men, recovering their 
confidence, were slapping each other on the back, and cast 
knowing glances at their captain while they busied them¬ 
selves with preparations for cooking. 

“ Kassim disliked Doramin and his Bugis very much, but 
he hated the new order of things still more. It had oc¬ 
curred to him that these whites, together with the Rajah’s 
followers, could attack and defeat the Bugis before Jim’s 
return. Then he reasoned general defection was sure to 
follow, and the reign of the white man who protected poor 
people would be over. Afterwards, the new allies could be 
dealt with. They would have no friends. The fellow was 
perfectly able to perceive the difference of character, and 
had seen enough of white men to know that these new¬ 
comers were outcasts, men without country. Brown pre¬ 
served a stern and inscrutable demeanour. When he first 
heard Cornelius’s voice demanding admittance it brought 
merely the hope of a loophole for escape. In less than an 
hour other thoughts were seething in his head. Urged by 
an extreme necessity, he had come there to steal food, a few 
tons of rubber or gum maybe, perhaps a handful of dollars, 
and had found himself enmeshed by deadly dangers. Now, 
in consequence of these overtures from Kassim, he began 
to think of stealing the whole country. Some confounded 
fellow had apparently accomplished something of the kind 
— single-handed at that. Couldn’t have done it very well, 




LORD JIM 


345 


though. Perhaps they could work together: — squeeze 
everything dry, and then go out quietly. In the course of 
his negotiations with Kassim he became aware that he was 
supposed to have a big ship with plenty of men outside. 
Kassim begged him earnestly to have this big ship with his 
many guns and men brought up the river without delay 
for the Rajah’s service. Brown professed himself willing, 
and on this basis the negotiation was carried on with 
mutual distrust. Three times in the course of the morning 
the courteous and active Kassim went down to consult the 
Rajah, and came up busily with his long stride. Brown, 
while bargaining, had a sort of grim enjoyment in thinking 
of his wretched schooner with nothing but a heap of dirt 
in her hold, that stood for an armed ship, and a Chinaman 
and a lame ex-beach-comber of Levuka on board, who repre¬ 
sented all his many men. In the afternoon he obtained 
further doles of food, a promise of some money, and a 
supply of mats for his men to make shelters for themselves. 
They lay down and snored, protected from the burning 
sunshine; but Brown, sitting fully exposed on one of the 
felled trees, feasted his eyes upon the view of the town and 
the river. There was much loot there. Cornelius, who had 
made himself at home in the camp, talked at his elbow, 
pointing out the localities, imparting advice, giving his 
own version of Jim’s character and commenting in his own 
fashion upon the events of the last three years. Brown, 
who, apparently indifferent and gazing away, listened with 
attention to every word, could not make out clearly what 
sort of man this Jim could be. ‘ What’s his name ? Jim ! 
Jim ! That’s not enough for a man’s name.’ ‘ They call 
him,’ said Cornelius scornfully, ‘ Tuan Jim here. As you 
may say, Lord Jim.’ ‘What is he? Where does he come 
from ? ’ inquired Brown. ‘ What sort of man is he ? I* he 


346 


LORu JIM 


an Englishman ? ’ ‘ Yes, yes, he’s an Englishman. 1 am an 

Englishman too. From Malacca. He is a fool. All yon 
have to do is to kill him and then you are king here. 
Everything belongs to him/ explained Cornelius. ‘ It 
strikes me he may be made to share with somebody before 
very long/ commented Brown half-aloud. ‘No, no. The 
proper way is to kill him the first chance you get, and then 
you can do what you like/ Cornelius would insist earnestly. 
‘ I have lived for many years here, and I am giving you a 
friend’s advice.’ 

“ In such converse and in gloating over the view of Patu- 
san, which he had determined in his mind should become 
his prey, Brown whiled away most of the afternoon while 
his men rested. On that day Dain Waris’s fleet of canoes 
stealing one by one under the shore farthest from the 
creek, went down to close the river against his retreat. 
Of this Brown was not aware, and Kassim, who came up 
the knoll an hour before sunset, took good care not to 
enlighten him. He wanted the white man’s ship to come 
up the river, and this news, he feared, would be discour¬ 
aging. He was very pressing with Brown to send the 
‘ order/ offering, at the same time, a trusty messenger, who 
for greater secrecy (as he explained) would make his way 
by land to the mouth of the river and deliver the ‘ order ’ 
on board. After some reflection Brown judged it expedient 
to tear a page out of his pocket-book, on which he simply 
wrote, ‘We are getting on. Big job. Detain the man.’ 
The stolid youth selected by Kassim for that service per. 
formed it faithfully, and was rewarded by being suddenly 
tipped, head first, into the schooner’s empty hold by the 
ex-beach-comber and the Chinaman, who thereupon hastened 
to put on the hatches. What became of him afterwards 
Brown did not say. 


LORD JIM 


54 ! 


CHAPTER XL 

li Brown’s object was to gain time by fooling with. Kas> 
sim’s diplomacy. For doing a real stroke of business he 
could not help thinking the white man was the person to 
work with. He could not imagine such a chap (who must 
be confoundedly clever, after all, to get hold of the natives 
like that) refusing a help that would do away with the' 
necessity for slow, cautious, risky cheating, that imposed 
itself as the only possible line of conduct for a single- 
handed man. He, Brown, would offer him the power. No 
man could hesitate. Everything was in coming to a clear 
understanding. Of course they would share. The idea of 
there being a fort—all ready to his hand — a real fort, with 
artillery (he knew this from Cornelius), excited him. Let 
him only once get in and . . . He would impose modest 
conditions. Not too low, though. The man was no fool, it 
seemed. They would work like brothers till . . . till the 
time came for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all 
accounts. With grim impatience of plunder he wished 
himself to be talking with the man now. The land already 
seemed to be his to tear to pieces, squeeze, and throw away. 
Meantime, Kassim had to be fooled for the sake of food first 
— and for a second string. But the principal thing was to 
get something to eat from day to day. Besides, he was not 
averse to begin fighting on that Rajah’s account, and teach 
a lesson to those people who had received him with shots. 
The lust of battle was upon him. 

“ 1 am sorry that I can’t give you this part of the story, 
which of course I have mainly from Brown, in Brown’s own 
words. There was in the broken, violent speech of that 
man, unveiling before me his thoughts with the very hand 


348 


LORD JIM 


of Death upon his throat, an undisguised ruthlessness of 
purpose, a strange vengeful attitude towards his own past, 
and a blind belief in the righteousness of his will as 
against all mankind, something of that feeling which could 
induce the leader of a horde of wandering cut-throats to 
call himself proudly the Scourge of God. No doubt the 
natural senseless ferocity which is the basis of such a char¬ 
acter was exasperated by failure, ill-luck, and the recent 
privations, as well as by the desperate position in which 
he found himself; but what was most remarkable of all 
was this, that while he planned treacherous alliances, had 
already settled in his mind the fate of the white man, and 
intrigued in an overbearing, off-hand manner with Kassim, 
one could perceive that what he really desired, almost in 
spite of himself, was to play havoc with that jungle town 
which had defied him, to see it strewn over with corpses 
and enveloped in flames. Listening to his pitiless, pant¬ 
ing voice, I could imagine how he must have looked at it 
from the hillock, peopling it with images of murder and 
rapine. The part nearest to the creek wore an abandoned 
aspect, though as a matter of fact every house concealed a 
few armed men on the alert. Suddenly, far over the stretch 
of waste ground, interspersed with small patches of low, 
dense bush, excavation, heaps of rubbish, with trodden 
paths between, a man, solitary and looking very small, 
strolled out into the deserted opening of the street between 
the shut-up, dark, lifeless buildings at the end. .Perhaps 
one of the inhabitants, who had fled to the other bank of 
the river, coming back for some object of domestic use. 
Evidently, he supposed himself quite safe at that distance 
from the hill on the other side of the creek. A light stock¬ 
ade, set up hastily, was just round the turn of the street, 
full of his friends. He moved leisurely. Brown saw him. 


LORD JIM 


349 


and instantly called to his side the Yankee deserter, who 
acted as a sort of second in command. This lanky, loose- 
jointed fellow came forward, wooden-faced, trailing his 
rifle lazily. When he understood what was wanted from 
him, a homicidal and conceited smile uncovered his teeth, 
making two deep folds down his sallow, leathery cheeks. 
He prided himself on being a dead shot. He dropped on 
one knee, and taking aim from a steady rest through the 
unlopped branches of a felled tree, fired, and at once stood 
up to look. The man, far away, turned his head to the 
report, made another step forward, seemed to hesitate, and 
abruptly got down on his hands and knees. In the silence 
that fell upon the sharp crack of the rifle, the dead shot, 
keeping his eyes fixed upon the quarry, guessed that ‘ this 
there coon’s health would never be a source of anxiety to 
his friends any more.’ The man’s limbs were seen to move 
rapidly under his body in an endeavour to run on all fours. 
In that empty space arose a multitudinous shout of dismay 
and surprise. The man sank flat, face down, and moved no 
more. ‘ That showed them what we could do,’ said Brown 
to me. ‘ Struck the fear of sudden death into them. That 
was what we wanted. They were two hundred to one, and 
this gave them something to think over for the night. Not 
one of them had an idea of such a long shot before. That 
beggar belonging to the Rajah scouted down hill with his 
eyes hanging out of his head.’ 

“ As he was telling me this he tried with a shaking hand 
to wipe the thin foam from his blue, writhing lips. ‘ Two 
hundred to one. Two hundred to one . . . strike terror, 
. . . terror, terror, I tell you. . . . ’ His own eyes were start¬ 
ing out of their sockets. He fell back, clawing the air with 
skinny, earthy fingers, sat up again, bowed and hairy, glared 
at me sideways like some man-beast of folk-lore, with open 


350 


LORD JIM 


mouth in his miserable and awful agony before he got his 
speech back after that fit. There are sights one never forgets. 

“ Furthermore, to draw the enemy’s fire and locate such 
parties as might have been hiding in the bushes along the 
creek, Brown ordered the Solomon Islander to go down to 
the boat and bring an oar, as you send a spaniel after a 
stick into the water. This failed, and the fellow came 
back without a single shot having been fired at him from 
anywhere. ‘ There’s nobody,’ opined some of the men. It 
is Connatural,’ remarked the Yankee. Kassim, indeed, had 
gone, very much impressed, pleased too, and also uneasy. 
Pursuing his tortuous policy, he had despatched a messaga 
to Dain Waris warning him to look out for the white men’s 
ship, which, he had had information, was about to come up 
the river. He minimised its strength and exhorted him 
to oppose its passage. This double-dealing answered his 
purpose, which was to keep the Bugis forces divided and 
to weaken them by fighting. On the other hand, he had in 
tho course of that day sent word to the assembled Bugia 
chiefs in town assuring them that he was trying to induce 
the invaders to retire; his messages to the fort asked 
earnestly for powder for the Rajah’s men. It was a long 
time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the 
score or so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the 
audience-hall. The open intercourse between the hill and 
the palace unsettled all the minds. It was already time 
for men to take sides, it began to be said. There would 
soon be much bloodshed, and thereafter great trouble for 
many people. The social fabric of orderly, peaceful life, 
when every man was sure of to-morrow, the edifice raised 
by Jim’s hands, seemed on that evening ready to collapse 
into a ruin reeking with blood. The poorer folk were 
already taking to the bush or flying up the river. A goo?' 


LORD JIM 


m 


many of the upper class judged it necessary to go and pay 
their court to the Rajah. The Rajah’s youths jostled them 
rudely. Old Tunku Allan g, almost out of his mind with 
fear and indecision, either kept a sullen silence or abused 
them violently for daring to come with empty hands; they 
departed very much frightened; only old Doramin kept his 
countrymen together and pursued his tactics inflexibly. 
Enthroned in a big chair behind the improvised stockade, 
he issued his orders in a deeply veiled rumble, unmoved, like 
a deaf man, in the flying rumours. 

“ Dusk fell, hiding first the body of the dead man, which 
had been left lying with arms outstretched as if nailed to 
the ground, and then the revolving sphere of the night rolled 
smoothly over Patusan and came to a rest, showering the 
glitter of countless worlds upon the earth. Again, in the 
exposed part of the town, big fires blazed along the only 
street, revealing from distance to distance upon their glares 
the falling straight lines of roofs, the fragments of wattled 
walls jumbled in confusion, here and there a whole hut 
elevated in the glow upon the vertical black stripes of a 
group of high piles; and all this line of dwellings, revealed 
in patches by the swaying flames, seemed to flicker tor¬ 
tuously away up river into the gloom at the heart of the 
land. A great silence, in which the looms of successive 
fires played without noise, extended into the darkness at 
the foot of the hill; but the other bank of the river, all 
dark save for a solitary bonfire at the river front before the 
fort, sent out into the air an increasing tremor that might 
have been the stamping of a multitude of feet, the hum of 
many voices, or the fall of an immensely distant waterfall. 
It was then, Brown confessed to me, while, turning his back 
on his men, ue sat looking at it all, that notwithstanding his 
disdain his ruthless faith in himself, a feeling came over 


352 


LORD JIM 


him that at last he had run his head against a stone wall 
Had his boat been afloat at the time, he believed he would 
have tried to steal away, taking his chances of a long chase 
down the river and of starvation at sea. It is very doubtful 
whether he would have succeeded in getting away. How¬ 
ever, he didn’t try this. For another moment he had a 
passing thought of trying to rush the town, but he perceived 
very well that in the end he would find himself in the 
lighted street, where they would be shot down like dogs 
from the houses. They were two hundred to one—he 
thought, while his men, huddling round two heaps of 
smouldering embers, munched the last of the bananas and 
roasted the few yams they owed to Kassim’s diplomacy. 
Cornelius sat amongst them dozing sulkily. 

“ Then one of the whites remembered that some tobacco 
had been left in the boat, and, encouraged by the impunity 
of the Solomon Islander, said he would go to fetch it. At 
this all the others shook off their despondency. Brown, 

applied to, said,‘ Go, and be d-d to you,’ scornfully. He 

didn’t think there was any danger in going to the creek in 
the dark. The man threw a leg over the tree-trunk and 
disappeared. A moment later he was heard clambering into 
the boat and then clambering out, ‘ I’ve got it,’ he cried. 
A flash and a report at the very foot of the hill followed. ‘ I 
am hit,’ yelled the man. 1 Look out, look out— I am hit/ 
and instantly all the rifles went off. The hill squirted fire 
and noise into the night like a little volcano, and when 
Brown and the Yankee, with curses and cuffs, stopped the 
panic-stricken firing, a profound, weary groan floated up 
from the creek, succeeded by a plaint whose heartrending 
sadness was like some poison turning the blood cold in the 
veins. Then a strong voice pronounced several distinct 
incomprehensible words somewhere beyond the creek. ‘ Let 



LORD JIM 


353 


no one fire,’ shouted Brown. ‘ What does it mean ? ’ . . . 

‘ Do you hear on the hill ? Do you hear ? Do you hear ? • 
repeated the voice three times. Cornelius translated, and 
then prompted the answer. * Speak/ cried Brown, ‘ we 
hear.’ Then the voice, declaiming in the sonorous inflated 
tone of a herald, and shifting continually on the edge of the 
vague waste-land, proclaimed that between the men of the 
Bugis nation living in Patusan and the white men on the 
hill and those with them, there would be no faith, no com¬ 
passion, no speech, no peace. A bush rustled; a haphazard 
volley rang out. ‘ Dam’ foolishness/ muttered the Yankee, 
vexedly grounding the butt. Cornelius translated. The 
wounded man below the hill, after crying out twice, * Take 
me up! take me up P went on complaining in moans. While 
he had kept on the blackened earth of the slope, and after¬ 
wards crouching in the boat, he had been safe enough. It 
seems that in his joy at finding the tobacco he forgot him¬ 
self and jumped out on her off-side, as it were. The white 
boat, lying high and dry, showed him up; the creek was 
no more than seven yards wide in that place, and there 
happened to be a man crouching in the bush on the other 
bank. 

“ He was a Bugis of Tondano only lately come to Patu¬ 
san, and a relation of the man shot in the afternoon. That 
famous long shot had indeed appalled the beholders. The 
man, in utter security, had been struck down, in full view 
of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they 
seemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a 
bitter rage. That relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was 
then with Doramin in the stockade only a few feet away. 
You who know these chaps must admit that the fellow 
showed an unusual pluck by volunteering to carry the mes¬ 
sage, alone, in the dark. Creeping across the open ground, 


354 


LORD JIM 


he had deviated to the left and found himself opposite tht 
boat. He was startled when Brown’s man shouted. He 
came to a sitting position with his gun to his shoulder, and 
when the other jumped out, exposing himself, he pulled the 
trigger and lodged three jagged slugs point-blank into the 
poor wretch’s stomach. Then, lying flat on his face, he 
gave himself up for dead, while a thin hail of lead chopped 
and swished the bushes close on his right hand; afterwards 
he delivered his speech shouting, bent double, dodging all 
the time in cover. With the last word he leaped sideways, 
lay close for a while, and afterwards got back to the houses 
unharmed, having achieved on that night such a renown as 
his children will not willingly allow to die. 

“And on the hill the forlorn band let the two little 
heaps of embers go out under their bowed heads. They 
sat dejected on the ground with compressed lips and down¬ 
cast eyes, listening to their comrade below. He was a 
strong man and died hard, with moans now loud, now sink¬ 
ing to a strange confidential note of pain. Sometimes he 
shrieked, and again, after a period of silence, he could 
be heard muttering deliriously a long and unintelligible 
complaint. Never for a moment did he cease. 

“ ‘ What’s the good ? ’ Brown had said, unmoved once, 
seeing the Yankee, who had been swearing under his 
breath, prepare to go down. ‘ That’s so,’ assented the de¬ 
serter, reluctantly desisting. ‘ There’s no encouragement 
for wounded men here. Only his noise is calculated to 
make all the others think too much of the hereafter, cap’n.’ 
‘ Water! ’ cried the wounded man in an extraordinary clear, 
vigorous voice, and then went off moaning feebly. ‘Ay, 
water. Water will do it,’ muttered the other to himself 
resignedly. ‘Plenty by and by. The tide is flowing.’ 

“At last the tide flowed, silencing the plaint and th« 


LORD JIM 


35* 


cries of pain, and the dawn was near when Brown, sitting 
with his chin in the palm of his hand before Patusan, as 
one might stare at the unscalable side of a mountain, heard 
the brief ringing bark of a brass 6-pounder far away in 
town somewhere. ‘ Wliat’s this ? ’ he asked of Cornelius, 
who hung about him. Cornelius listened. A muffled roar¬ 
ing shout rolled down river over the town; a big drum 
began to throb, and others responded, pulsating and dron¬ 
ing. Tiny scattered lights began to twinkle in the dark 
half of the town, while the part lighted by the loom of 
fires hummed with a deep and prolonged murmur. ‘He 
has come,’ said Cornelius. ‘ What ? Already ? Are you 
sure ? ’ Brown asked. ‘ Yes! yes! Sure. Listen to the 
noise.’ ‘ What are they making that row about ? ’ pursued 
Brown. ‘For joy,’ snorted Cornelius; ‘he is a very great 
man, but all the same, he knows no more than a child, and 
so they make a great noise to please him, because they know 
no better.’ ‘Look here,’ said Brown, ‘how is one to get at 
him ? ’ ‘ He shall come to talk to you,’ Cornelius declared. 

‘ What do you mean ? Come down here strolling, as it 
were?’ Cornelius nodded vigorously in the dark. ‘Yes. 
He will come straight here and talk to you. He is just 
like a fool. You shall see what a fool he is.’ Brown was 
incredulous. ‘ You shall see; you shall see,’ repeated Cor¬ 
nelius. ‘He is not afraid — not afraid of anything. He 
will come and order you to leave his people alone. Every¬ 
body must leave his people alone. He is like a little child. 
He will come to you straight.’ Alas! he knew Jim well — 
that ‘mean little skunk,’ as Brown called him to me. 
‘Yes, certainly,’ he pursued with ardour, ‘and then, cap¬ 
tain, you tell that tall man with a gun to shoo'*' him. Just 
you kill him, and you shall frighten everybody so much 
that you can do anything you like with them afterwards — 


356 


LOUD JIM 


get what you like — go away when you like. Ha! ha', 
ha! Fine . . * He almost danced with impatience and 
eagerness, and Brown, looking over his shoulder at him, 
could see, shown up by the pitiless dawn, his men drenched 
with dew, sitting amongst the cold ashes and the litter of 
the camp, haggard, cowed, and in rags.” 


CHAPTER XLI 

“ To the very last moment, till the full day came upon 
them with a spring, the fires on the west bank blazed 
bright and clear; and then Brown saw in a knot of coloured 
figures motionless between the advanced houses a man in 
European clothes, in a helmet, all white. i That’s him; 
look! look! ’ Cornelius said excitedly. All Brown’s men 
had sprung up and crowded at his back with lustreless 
eyes. The group of vivid colours and dark faces with the 
white figure in their midst were observing the knoll. 
Brown could see naked arms being raised to shade the eyes 
and other brown arms pointing. What should he do ? He 
looked around, and the forests that faced him on all sides 
walled the cockpit of an unequal contest. He looked once 
more at his men. A contempt, a weariness, the desire of 
life, the wish to try for one more chance — for some other 
grave — struggled in his breast. From the outline the 
figure presented it seemed to him that the white man there, 
backed up by all the power of the land, was examining his 
position through binoculars. Brown jumped up on the 
log, throwing his arms up, the palms outwards. The 
coloured group closed round the white man, and fell back 
twice before he got clear of them, walking slowly alone. 
Brown remained standing on the log till Jim, appearing 
and disappearing between the patches of thorny scrub, had 



LORD JIM 


357 


nearly reached the creek; then Brown jumped off and 
went down to meet him on his side. 

“ They met, I should think, not very far from the place, 
perhaps on the very spot, where Jiin took the second des¬ 
perate leap of his life — the leap that landed him into the 
life of Patusan, into the trust, the love, the confidence of 
the people. They faced each other across the creek, and 
with steady eyes tried to understand each other before they 
opened their lips. Their antagonism must have been 
expressed in their glances ; I know that Brown hated Jim 
at first sight. Whatever hopes he might have had van¬ 
ished at once. This was not the man he had expected to 
see. He hated him for this—and in a checked flannel 
shirt with sleeves cut off at the elbows, grey-bearded, with 
a sunken, sun-blackened face — he cursed in his heart the 
other’s youth and assurance, his clear eyes, and his un¬ 
troubled bearing. That fellow had got in a long way 
before him! He did not look like a man who would be 
willing to give anything for assistance. He had all the 
advantages on his side — possession, security, power; he 
was on the side of an overwhelming force! He was not 
hungry and desperate, and he did not seem in the least 
afraid. And there was something in the very neatness of 
Jim’s clothes, from the white helmet to the canvas leggings 
and the pipeclayed shoes, which in Brown’s sombre, irritated 
eyes seemed to belong to things he had in the very shaping 
of his life contemned and flouted. 

“ ‘ Who are you ? ’ asked Jim at last, speaking in his usual 
voice. ‘My name’s Brown,’ answered the other loudly. 
‘Captain Brown. What’s yours?’ and Jim, after a little 
pause, went on quietly, as if he had not heard: ‘ What 
made you come here? ’ ‘You want to know,’ said Brown, 
bitterly. ‘ It’s easy to tell. Hunger. And what made you?’ 


S58 


LORD JIM 


“ ‘ The fellow started at this/ said Brown, relating to me 
the opening of this strange conversation between those two 
men, separated only by the muddy bed of a creek, but 
standing on the opposite poles of that conception of life 
which includes all mankind — ‘The fellow started at this 
and got very red in the face. Too big to be questioned, 
I suppose. I told him that if he looked upon me as a dead 
man with whom you may take liberties, he himself was not 
a whit better off really. I had a fellow up there who had 
a bead drawn on him all the time, and only waited for a 
sign from me. There was nothing to be shocked at in this. 
He had come down of his own free will. “ Let us agree,” 
said I, “ that we are both dead men, and let us talk on that 
basis, as equals. We are all equals before death,” I said. 
I admitted I was there like a rat in a trap, but we had 
been driven to it, and even a trapped rat can give a bite. 
He caught me up in a moment. “Not if you don’t go near 
the trap till the rat is dead.” I told him that sort of game 
was good enough for these native friends of his, but I would 
have thought him too white to serve even a rat so. Yes, I 
had wanted to talk with him. Not to beg for my life, 
though. My fellows were — well — what they were — men 
like himself, anyhow. All we wanted from him was to 

come on in the devil’s name and have it out. “ God d-n 

it,” said I, while he stood there as still as a wooden post, 
“you don’t want to come out here every day with your 
glasses to count how many of us are left on our feet. 
Come. Either bring your infernal crowd along or let us 
go out and starve in the open sea, by God! You have been 
white once, for all your tall talk of this being your own 
people and you being one with them. Are you? And 
what the devil do you get for it; what is it you’ve found 
here that is so d-d precious ? Hey ? You don’t want ’ia 




LORD JIM 


359 


to come down here, perhaps — do you ? You are two hun¬ 
dred to one. You don’t want us to come down into the 
open. Ah ! I promise you we shall give you some sport 
before you’ve done. You talk about me making a cowardly 
set upon unoffending people. What’s that to me that they 
are unoffending when I am starving for next to no offence ? 
But I am not a coward. Don’t you be one. Bring them 
along, or, by all the fiends, we shall yet manage to send 
half of your unoffending town to heaven with us in 
smoke! ” ’ 

“He was terrible — relating this to me — this tortured 
skeleton of a man drawn up together with his face over his 
knees, upon a miserable bed in that wretched hovel, and 
lifting his head to look at me with malignant triumph. 

That’s what I told him — I knew what to say, he 
began again, feebly at first, but working himself up with 
incredible speed into a fiery utterance of his scorn. ‘We 
aren’t going into the forest to wander like a string of living 
skeletons dropping one after another for ants to go to work 
upon us before we are fairly dead. Oh, no! . . . “You 
don’t deserve a better fate,” he said. “ And what do you 
deserve,” I shouted at him, “you that I find skulking here 
with your mouth full of your responsibility, of innocent 
lives, of your infernal duty ? What do you know more of 
me than I know of you ? I came here for food. D’ye hear ? 
.— food to fill our bellies. And what did you come for? 
What did you ask for when you came here? We don’t 
ask you for anything but to give us a fight or a clear road 
to go back whence we came. ...” “I would fight with you 
now,” says he, pulling at his little moustache. “And I 
would let you shoot me, and welcome,” I said. “ This is as 
good a jumping-off place for me as another. I am sick of 
my infernal luck. But it would be too easy. There are my 


LORD JIM 


860 

men in the same boat — and, by God, I am not the sort to 

jump out of trouble and leave them in a d-d lurch,” I 

said. He stood thinking for a while and then wanted to 
know what I had done (“out there,” he says, tossing his 
head down stream) to be hazed about so. “ Have we met 
to tell each other the story of our lives ? ” I asked him. 
“ Suppose you begin. No ? Well, I am sure I don’t want 
to hear. Keep it to yourself. I know it is no better than 
mine. I’ve lived—and so did you, though you talk as if 
you were one of those people that should have wings so as 
to go about without touching the dirty earth. Well — it is 
dirty. I haven’t got any wings. I am here because I was 
afraid once in my life. Want to know what of? Of a 
prison. That scares me, and you may know it — if it’s any 
good to you. I won’t ask you what scared you into this 
infernal hole, where you seem to have found pretty pick¬ 
ings. That’s your luck and this is mine — the privilege to 
beg for the favour of being shot quickly, or else kicked out. 
to go free and starve in my own way.” . . ’ 

“ His debilitated body shook with an exultation so vehe¬ 
ment, so assured, and so malicious that it seemed to have 
driven off the death waiting for him in that hut. The 
corpse of his mad self-love uprose from rags and destitution 
as from the dark horrors of a tomb. It is impossible to say 
how much lie lied to Jim then, how much he lied to me 
now — and to himself always. Vanity plays lurid tricks 
with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants 
some pretence to make it live. Standing at the gate of the 
other world in the guise of a beggar, he had slapped this 
world’s face, he had spat on it, he had thrown upon it an 
immensity of scorn and revolt at the bottom of his mis¬ 
deeds. He had overcome them all — men, women, savages, 
traders, ruffians, missionaries — and Jim — that beefy-faced 



LORD JIM 


361 


beggar. I did not begrudge him this triumph in articula 
mortis , this almost posthumous illusion of having trampled 
all the earth under his feet. While he was boasting to me, 
in his sordid and repulsive agony, I couldn't help thinking 
of the chuckling talk relating to the time of his greatest 
splendour, when, during a year or more, Gentleman Brown’s 
ship was to be seen, for many days on end, hovering down 
Erromanga way, off an islet befringed with green upon 
azure, with the dark dot of the mission-house on a white 
beach; while Gentleman Brown, ashore, was casting the 
spell of his fame over a romantic girl for whom Melanesia 
had been too much, and giving hopes of a remarkable con¬ 
version to her husband. The poor man, some time or other, 
had been heard to express the hope of winning ‘Captain 
Brown to a better way of life.’ . . . ‘ Bag Gentleman Brown 
for Glory’—as a leery-eyed loafer expressed it once—‘just 
to let them see up above what a Western Pacific trading 
skipper looks like.’ And this was the man, too, who had 
run off with a dying woman, and had shed tears over her 
body. ‘ Carried on like a big baby,’ his then mate was never 
tired of telling, ‘ and where the fun came in may I be kicked 
to death by diseased Kanakas if I know. Why, gents! 
She was too far gone when he brought her aboard to know 
him; she just lay there on her back in his bunk staring at 
the beam with awful shying eyes — and then she died. 
Dam’ bad sort of fever, I guess. . .’I remembered all 

these stories while, wiping his matted lump of a beard with 
a livid, bony hand, he was telling me from his noisome 
couch how he got round, got in, got home, on that con¬ 
founded, immaculate, don’t-you-touch-me sort of fellow. 
He admitted that he couldn’t be scared, but there was a way, 
‘ as broad as a turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny 
soul around and inside out and upside down — by God! ’ ” 


362 


LORD JIM 


CHAPTER XLII 

“ I don’t think he could do more than perhaps look upon 
that straight path. He seemed to have been puzzled by 
what he saw, for he interrupted himself in his narrative 
more than once to exclaim, ‘ He nearly slipped from me 
there. I could not make him out. Who was he?’ And 
after glaring at me wildly he would go on, jubilating 
and sneering. To me the conversation of these two across 
the creek appears now as the deadliest kind of duel on 
which Fate looked on with her cold-eyed knowledge of the 
end. No, he didn’t turn Jim’s soul inside out, but I am 
much mistaken if the spirit so utterly out of his reach had 
not been made to taste to the full the bitterness of that 
contest. These were the emissaries with whom the world 
he had renounced was pursuing him in his retreat. White 
men from * out there,’ where he did not think himself good 
enough to live. This was all that came to him — a menace, 
a shock, a danger to his work. I suppose it is this sad, 
half-resentful, half-resigned feeling, piercing through the 
few words Jim said now and then that puzzled Brown so 
much in the reading of his character. Some great men owe 
most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those 
they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength 
that matters for their work; and Brown, as though he had 
been really great, had a satanic gift of finding out the best 
and the weakest spot in his victims. He admitted to me that 
Jim wasn’t of the sort that can be got over by truckling, 
and accordingly he took care to show himself as a man con¬ 
fronting without dismay ill-luck, censure, and disaster. The 
smuggling of a few guns was no great crime, he pointed out. 
As to coming to Patusan, who had the right to say he hadn’t 


LORD JIM 


363 


come to beg? The infernal people here let loose at him 
from both banks without staying to ask questions. He 
made the point brazenly, for, in truth, Dain Waris’s ener¬ 
getic action had prevented the greatest calamities; because 
Brown told me distinctly that, perceiving the size of the 
place, he had resolved instantly in his mind that as soon as 
he had gained a footing he would set fire right and left, and 
begin by shooting down everything living in sight, in order 
to cow and terrify the population. The disproportion of 
forces was so great that this was the only way giving him 
the slightest chance of attaining his ends — he argued in a 
fit of coughing. But he didn’t tell Jim this. As to the 
hardships and starvation they had gone through, these had 
been very real; it was enough to look at his band. He 
made, at the sound of a shrill whistle, all his men appear 
standing in a row on the logs in full view, so that Jim could 
see them. For the killing of the man, it had been done — 
well, it had — but was not this war, bloody war — in a cor¬ 
ner ? and the fellow had been killed cleanly, shot through 
the chest, not like that poor devil of his lying now in the 
creek. They had to listen to him dying for six hours, with 
his entrails torn with slugs. At any rate, this was a life for a 
life. . . . And all this was said with the weariness, with the 
recklessness of a man spurred on and on by ill-luck till he 
cares not where he runs. Not a gleam of light, not a break 
in the mischance. When he asked Jim, with a sort of 
brusque, despairing frankness, whether he himself—straight 
now — didn’t understand that when 4 it came to saving one’s 
life in the dark, one didn’t care who else went — three, 
thirty, three hundred people ’ — it was as if a demon had 
been whispering advice in his ear. ‘ I made him wince,’ 
boasted Brown to me. * He very soon left off coming the 
righteous over me. He just stood there with nothing to 


364 


LORD JIM 


jay, and looking as black as thunder — not at me — on the 
ground/ He asked Jim whether he had nothing fishy in 
his life to remember that he was so damnedly hard upon a 
man trying to get out of a deadly hole by the first means 
tha.t came to hand — and so on, and so on. And there ran 
through the rough talk a vein of subtle reference to-their 
common blood, an assumption of common experience; a 
sickening suggestion of common guilt, of a secret know¬ 
ledge that was like a bond to their minds and their hearts. 

“At last Brown threw himself down full length and 
watched Jim out of the corners of his eyes. Jim, on his 
side of the creek, stood thinking and switching his leg. 
The houses in view were silent as if a pestilence had swept 
them clean of every breath of life; but many invisible eyes 
watched from within the two men with the creek between 
them, a stranded white boat, and the body of the third man 
half sunk in the mud. On the river canoes were moving 
again, for Patusan was recovering its belief in the stability 
of earthly institutions since the return of the white lord. 
The right bank, the platforms of the houses, the rafts 
moored along the shores, even the roofs of bathing-huts, 
were covered with people that, far away out of earshot and 
almost out of sight, were straining their eyes towards the 
knoll beyond the Rajah’s stockade. Within the wide 
irregular ring of forests, broken in two places by the sheen 
of the river, there was a silence. ‘ Will you promise to 
leave the coast?’ Jim asked. Brown lifted and let fab 
his arm, giving everything up, as it were — accepting th> 
inevitable. ‘And surrender your arms?’ Jim went on. 
Brown sat up and glared across. ‘Surrender our arms': 
Hot till you come to take them out of our stiff hands. You 
think I am gone crazy with funk ? Oh, no! That and the 
rags I stand in are all I have got in the world, besides a few 




LOBD JIM 


365 


more breech-loaders on board; and I expect to sell the lot 
in Madagascar, if I ever get so far,—begging my way from 
ship to ship.’ 

“ Jim said nothing to this. At last, throwing away the 
switch he held m his hand, he said, as if speaking to him¬ 
self, ‘I don’t know whether I have the power. . . .’ ‘You 
don’t know ! And you wanted me just now to give up my 
arms ! That’s good, too,’ cried Brown. 4 Suppose they say 
one thing to you, and do the other thing to me.’ He calmed 
down markedly. ‘ I daresay you have the power, or what’s 
the meaning of all this talk?’ he continued, ‘What did 
you come down here for? To pass the time of day?’ 

‘“Very well,’ said Jim, lifting his head suddenly after 
a long silence. ‘You shall have a clear road or a clear 
fight.’ He turned on his heel and walked away. 

“Brown got up at once, but he did not go up the hill 
till he had seen Jim disappear between the first houses. 
He never set his eyes on him again. On his way back 
he met Cornelius slouching down with his head between 
his shoulders. He stopped before Brown. ‘ Why didn’t 
you kill him ? ’ he demanded in a sour, discontented voice. 
‘ Because I could do better than that,’ Brown said, with an 
amused smile. ‘Never! never!’ protested Cornelius, with 
energy. ‘Couldn’t. I have lived here for many years.’ 
Brown looked up at him curiously. There were many 
sides to the life of that place in arms against him; things 
he would never find out Cornelius slunk past dejectedly 
in th© direction of the river. He was now leaving his new 
friends; he accepted the disappointing course of events 
with a sulky obstinacy which seemed to draw more 
together his little, yellow, old face; and as he went 
down he glanced askant here and there, never giving up 
his fixed idea. 


366 


LOBD JIM 


“ Henceforth events move fast without a check, flowing 
from the very hearts of men like a stream from a dark 
source, and we see Jim amongst them, mostly through 
Tamb’ Itam’s eyes. The girl’s eyes had watched him, 
too, but her life is too much entwined with his: there is 
her passion, her wonder, her anger, and, before all, her 
fear and her unforgiving love. Of the faithful servant, 
uncomprehending as the rest of them, it is the fidelity 
alone that comes into play; a fidelity and a belief in his 
lord so strong that even amazement is subdued to a sort of 
saddened acceptance of a mysterious failure. He had eyes 
only for one figure, and through all the mazes of bewilder¬ 
ment he preserves his air of guardianship, of obedience, 
of care. 

“ His master came back from his talk with the white 
men, walking slowly towards the stockade in the street. 
Everybody was rejoiced to see him return, for while he 
was away every man was afraid, not only of him being 
killed, but also of what would come after, Jim went into 
one of the houses where old Doramin had retired, and 
remained alone for a long time with the head of the Bugis 
settlers. No doubt he discussed the course to follow with 
him then, but no man was present at the conversation. 
Only Tamb’ Itam, keeping as close to the door as he could, 
heard his master say, ‘Yes. I shall let all the people 
know that such is my wish; but I spoke to you, 0 Dora¬ 
min, before all the others, aiid alone; for you know my 
heart as well as I know yours, and its greatest desire. 
But you know well also that I have no thought but for 
the people’s good.’ Then his master, lifting the sheeting 
in the doorway, went out, and he, Tamb’ Itam, had a 
glimpse of old Doramin within, sitting in the chair with 
his hands on his knees, and looking between his feet 



LORD JIM 


367 


Afterwards he followed his master to the fort, where all 
the principal Bugis and Patusan inhabitants had been 
summoned for a talk. Tamb’ Itam himself hoped there 
would be some fighting. 4 What was it but the taking 
of another hill ? ’ he exclaimed mournfully. However, in 
the town many hoped that the rapacious strangers would 
be induced, by the sight of so many brave men making 
ready to fight, to go away. It would be a good thing if 
they went away. Since Jim’s arrival had been made 
known before daylight by the gun fired from the fort 
and the beating of the big drum there, the fear that had 
hung over Patusan had broken and subsided like a wave 
on a rock, leaving the seething foam of excitement, curi¬ 
osity, and endless speculation. Half of the population had 
been ousted out of their homes for purposes of defence 
and were living in the street on the left side of the river, 
crowding round the fort, and in momentary expectation of 
seeing their abandoned dwellings on the threatened bank 
burst into flames. The general anxiety was to see the 
matter settled quickly. Food, through Jewel’s care, had 
been served out to the refugees. Nobody knew what their 
white man would do. Some remarked that it was worse 
than in Sherif Ali’s war. Then many people did not 
care; now everybody had something to lose. The move¬ 
ments of canoes passing to and fro between the two parts 
of the town were watched with interest. A couple of 
Bugis war-boats lay anchored in the middle of the stream 
to protect the river, and a thread of smoke stood at the 
bow of each; the men in them were cooking their mid¬ 
day rice when Jim, after his interviews with Brown and 
Doramin, crossed the river and entered by the water-gate 
of his fort. The people inside crowded round him so that 
he could hardly make his way to the house. They had 


368 


LORD JIM 


not seen him before, because on his arrival daring the 
night he had only exchanged a few words with the girl, 
who had come down to the landing-stage for the purpose, 
and had then gone on at once to join the chiefs and the 
fighting men on the other bank. People shouted greet¬ 
ings after him. One old woman raised a laugh by push¬ 
ing her way to the front madly, and enjoining him in a 
scolding voice to see to it that her two sons, who were 
with Doramin, did not come to harm at the hands of the 
robbers. Several of the bystanders tried to pull her away, 
but she struggled and cried, ‘ Let me go. What is this, 0 
Muslims ? This laughter is unseemly. Are they not 
cruel, bloodthirsty robbers bent on killing ? ’ ‘ Let her 

be/ said Jim, and as a silence fell suddenly, he said 
slowly, ‘Everybody shall be safe,’ He entered the house 
before the great sigh and the loud murmurs of satisfaction 
had died out. 

“There’s no doubt his mind was made up that Brown 
should have his way clear back to the sea. His fate, 
revolted, was forcing his hand. He had for the first time 
to affirm his will in the face of outspoken opposition, 

‘ There was much talk, and at first my master was silent,’ 
Tamb’ Itam said. ‘Darkness came, and then I lit th& 
candles on the long table. The chiefs sat on each side, 
and the lady remained by my master’s right hand.’ 

“When he began to speak the unaccustomed difficulty 
seemed only to fix his resolve more immovably. The white 
men were now waiting for his answer on the hill. Their 
chief had spoken to him in the language of his own people, 
making clear many things difficult to explain in any other 
speech. They were erring men whom suffering had made 
blind to right and wrong. It is true that lives had been 
lost already, but why lose more? He declared to his 


LORD JIM 


369 


hearers, the assembled heads of the people, that their wel« 
fare was his welfare, their losses his losses, their mourning 
his mourning. He looked round at the grave listening 
faces and told them to remember that they had fought and 
worked side by side. They knew his courage . . Here 

a murmur interrupted him . . . And that he had never 
deceived them. For many years they had dwelt together. 
He loved the land and the people living in it with a very 
great love. He was ready to answer with his life for any 
harm that should come to them if the white men with 
beards were allowed to retire. They were evil-doers, but 
their destiny had been evil too. Had he ever advised them 
ill ? Had his words ever brought suffering to the people ? * 
he asked. He believed that it would be best to let these 
whites and their followers go with their lives. It would be 
a small gift. *' I whom you have tried and found always 
true ask you to let them go.’ He turned to Doramin. The 
old nakhoda made no movement. ‘ Then,’ said Jim, ‘ call 
in Dain Waris, your son, my friend, for in this business I 
shall not lead.’ ” 


CHAPTER XLIII 

“Tame’ Itam behind his chair was thunderstruck. The 
declaration produced an immense sensation. ‘Let them 
go, because this is best, in my knowledge, which has never 
deceived you/ said Jim. There was a silence. In the 
darkness of the courtyard there could be heard the sub¬ 
dued whispering, shuffling noise of many people. Doramin 
raised his heavy head and said that there was no more read 
ing of hearts than touching the sky with the hand, but — 
he consented. The others gave their opinion in turn- ‘It 



370 


LORD JIM 


is best/ ‘ Let them go/ and so on. But most of them sim 
ply said that they ‘ believed Tuan Jim.’ 

“In this simple form of assent to his will lies the whole 
gist of the situation; their creed, his truth; and the testi¬ 
mony to that faithfulness which made him in his own eyes 
the equal of the impeccable men who never fall out of the 
ranks. Stein’s words, ‘Romantic!—romantic!’ seem to 
ring over those distances that will never give him up now 
to a world indifferent to his failing and his virtues, and to 
that ardent and clinging affection that refuses him the dole 
of tears in the bewilderment of a great grief and of vernal 
separation. From the moment the sheer truthfulness of 
his last three years of life carries the day against the igno¬ 
rance, the fear, and the anger of men, he appears no longer 
to me as I saw him last—a white speck catching all the 
dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea — 
but greater and more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, 
that remains even for her who loved him best a cruel and 
insoluble mystery. 

“ It is evident that he did not mistrust Brown; there was 
no reason to doubt the story, whose truth seemed warranted 
by the rough frankness, by a sort of virile sincerity in ac¬ 
cepting the morality and the consequences of his acts. But 
Jim did not know the almost inconceivable egotism of the 
man which made him, when resisted and foiled in his will, 
mad with the indignant and revengeful rage of a thwarted 
autocrat. But if Jim did not mistrust Brown, he was 
evidently anxious that some misunderstanding should not 
occur, ending perhaps in collision and bloodshed. It was 
for this reason that directly the Malay chiefs had gone he 
asked Jewel to get him something to eat, as he was going 
out of the fort to take command in the town. On her 
remonstrating against this on the score of his fatigue, he 


LORD JIM 


371 


said that something might happen for which he would nevei 
forgive himself. ‘ I am responsible for every life in the 
land/ he said. He was moody at first; she served him 
with her own hands, taking the plates and dishes (of the 
dinner-service presented him by Stein) from Tamb’ Itam. 
He brightened up after a while; told her she would be 
again in command for another night. * There’s no sleep for 
us, old girl,’ he said, ‘ while our people are in danger.’ Later 
on he said jokingly that she was the best man of them all. 
‘If you and Dain Waris had done what you wanted, not 
one of these poor devils would be alive to-day.’ 1 Are they 
very bad?’ she asked, leaning over his chair. ‘Men act 
badly sometimes without being much worse than others,’ 
he said, after some hesitation. 

“Tamb’ Itam followed his master to the landing-stage 
outside the fort. The night was clear but without a moon, 
and the middle of the river was dark, while the water under 
each bank reflected the light of many fires ‘ as on a night of 
Ramadan,’ Tamb’ Itam said. War-boats drifted silently in 
the dark lane or, anchored, floated motionless with a loud 
ripple. That night there was much paddling in a canoe 
and walking at his master’s heels for Tamb’ Itam: up and 
down the street they tramped, where the fires were burning, 
inland on the outskirts of the town where small parties of 
men kept guard in the fields. Tuan Jim gave his orders, 
and was obeyed. Last of all they went to the Rajah’s 
stockade, which a detachment of Jim’s people manned on 
that night. The old Rajah had fled early in the morning 
with most of his women to a small house he had near a 
jungle village on a tributary stream. Kassim, left behind, 
had attended the council with his air of diligent activity 
to explain away the diplomacy of the day before. He 
was considerably cold-shouldered, but managed to preserve 


872 


LORD JIM 


his smiling, quiet alertness, and professed himself highly 
delighted when Jim told him sternly that he proposed to 
occupy the stockade on that night with his own men. After 
the council broke up he was heard outside accosting this 
and that departing chief, and speaking in a loud, gratified 
tone of the Rajah’s property being protected in the Rajah’s 
absence. 

“ About ten or so of Jim’s men marched in. The stock¬ 
ade commanded the mouth of the creek, and Jim meant to 
remain there till Brown had passed below. A small fire 
was lit on the flat, grassy point outside the wall of stakes, 
and Tamb’ Itam placed a little folding-stool for his master. 
Jim told him to try and sleep. Tamb’ Itam got a mat and 
lay down a little way off; but he could not sleep, though 
he knew he had to go on an important journey before the 
night was out. His master walked to and fro before the 
fire with bowed head and with his hands behind his back. 
His face was sad. Whenever his master approached him 
Tamb’ Itam pretended to sleep, not wishing his master to 
know he had been watched. At last his master stood still, 
looking down on him as he lay, and said softly, ‘ It is time.’ 

“ Tamb’ Itam arose directly and made his preparations. 
His mission was to go down the river, preceding Brown’s 
boat by an hour or more, to tell Dain Waris, finally and 
formally, that the whites were to be allowed to pass out 
unmolested. Jim would not trust anybody else with that 
service. Before starting, Tamb’ Itam, more as a matter of 
form (since his position about Jim made him perfectly 
known), asked for a token. ‘Because, Tuan,’ he said, ‘the 
message is important, and these are thy very words I carry.’ 
His master first put his hand into one pocket, then into 
Another, and finally took off his forefinger Stein’s silvei 
*ing, which he habitually wore, and gave it to Tar'll' Ttam 


LORD JIM 


373 


When Tamb’ Itam left on his mission, Brown’s camp on the 
knoll was dark but for a single small glow shining through 
the branches of one of the trees the white men had cut down. 

“ Early in the evening Brown had received from Jim a 
folded piece of paper on which was written, ‘You get the 
clear road. Start as soon as your boat floats on the morn¬ 
ing tide. Let your men be careful. The bushes on both 
sides of the creek and the stockade at the mouth are full of 
Well-armed men. You would have no chance, but I don’t 
believe you want bloodshed.’ Brown read it, tore the 
paper into small pieces, and, turning to Cornelius, who had 
brought it, said jeeringly, ‘Good-bye, my excellent friend.’ 
Cornelius had been in the fort, and had been sneaking 
around Jim’s house during the afternoon. Jim chose him 
to carry the note because he could speak English, was 
known to Brown, and was not likely to be shot by some 
nervous mistake of one of the men, as a Malay approaching 
in the dusk, perhaps, might have been. 

“Cornelius didn’t go away after delivering the paper. 
Brown was sitting up over a tiny fire; all the others were 
lying down. ‘ I could tell you something you would like to 
know,’ Cornelius mumbled crossly. Brown paid no atten¬ 
tion. ‘ You did not kill him,’ went on the other, ‘and what 
do you get for it ? You might have had money from the 
Rajah, besides the loot of all the Bugis houses, and now you 
get nothing.’ ‘ You had better clear out from here,’ growled 
Brown, without even looking at him. But Cornelius let 
himself drop by his side and began to whisper very fast, 
touching his elbow from time to time. What he had to say 
made Brown sit up at first, with a curse. He had simply 
informed him of Dain Waris’s armed party down the river. 
At first Brown saw himself completely sold and betrayed, 
but a moment’s reflection convinced him that there could be 


374 


LORD JIM 


no treachery intended. He said nothing, and after a while 
Cornelius remarked, in a tone of complete indifference, that 
there was another way out of the river which he knew very 
well. ‘ A good thing to know, too/ said Brown, pricking up 
his ears; and Cornelius began to talk of what went on 
in town and repeated all that had been said in council, 
gossiping in an even undertone at Brown’s ear as you talk 
amongst sleeping men you do not wish to wake. ‘ He 
thinks he has made me harmless, does he?’ mumbled 
Brown very low. . . . ‘ Yes. He is a fool. A little child. 
He came here and robbed me,’ droned on Cornelius, ‘ and he 
made all the people believe him. But if something hap¬ 
pened that they did not believe him any more, where would 
he be ? And the Bugis Dain who is waiting for you down 
the river there, captain, is the verj r man who chased you up 
here when you first came.’ Brown observed nonchalantly 
that it would be just as well to avoid him, and with the 
same detached, musing air Cornelius declared himself 
acquainted with a backwater broad enough to take Brown’s 
boat past Waris’s camp. ‘You will have to be quiet,’ he 
said, as an afterthought, ‘.for in one place we pass close 
behind his camp. Very close. They are camped ashore 
with their boats hauled up.’ ‘ Oh, we know how to be as 
quiet as mice. Never fear,’ said Brown. Cornelius stipu¬ 
lated that in case he were to pilot Brown out, his canoe 
should be towed. ‘I’ll have to get back quick,’ he ex¬ 
plained. 

“ It was^ two hours before the dawn when word was 
passed to the stockade from outlying watchers that the 
white robbers were coming down to their boat. In a very 
short time every armed man from one end of Patusan to 
the other was on the alert, yet the banks of the river 
remained so silent that but for the fires burning with 


LORD JIM 


375 


sudden blurred flares the town might have been asleep 
as if in peace-time. A heavy mist lay very low on the 
water, making a sort of illusive grey light that showed 
nothing. When Brown’s long-boat glided out of the creek 
into the river, Jim was standing on the low point of land 
before the Rajah’s stockade — on the very spot where for 
the first time he put his foot on Ratusan shore. A shadow 
loomed up, moving in the greyness, solitary, very bulky, 
and yet constantly eluding the eye. A murmur of low 
talking came out of it. Brown at the tiller heard Jim 
speak calmly: ‘A clear road. You had better trust to 
the current while it’s so thick; but this will lift pres¬ 
ently.’ ( Yes, presently we shall see clear,’ replied Brown. 

“ The thirty or forty men standing with muskets at 
ready outside the stockade held their breath. The Bugis 
owner of the prau, whom I saw on Stein’s verandah, and 
who was amongst them, told me that the boat, shaving 
the low point close, seemed for a moment to grow big and 
hang over it like a mountain. ‘ If you think it worth your 
while to wait a day outside,’ called out Jim, 1 I’ll try to 
send you down something — a bullock, some yams — what 
I can.’ The high shadow went on moving. ‘Yes. Do , 1 
said a voice, blank and muffled, out of the fog. Not one 
of the many attentive listeners understood what the words 
meant; and then Brown and his men in their boat floated 
away, fading spectrally without the slightest sound. 

“ Thus Brown, invisible in the mist, goes out of Patusan 
elbow to elbow with Cornelius in the stern-sheets of the. 
long-boat. ‘ Perhaps you shall get a small bullock,’ said 
Cornelius. ‘Oh, yes. Bullock. Yam. You’ll get it if he 
said so. He always speaks the truth. He stole every¬ 
thing I had. I suppose you like a small bullock better 
than .the loot of many houses.’ ‘ I would advise you tc 


376 


LOED JIM 


hold your tongue, or somebody here may fling you over¬ 
board into this damned fog,’ said Brown. The boat seemed 
to be standing still; nothing could be seen, not even the 
river alongside, only the water-dust flew and trickled, con¬ 
densed, down their beards and faces. It was weird, Brown 
told me. Every individual man of them felt as though he 
were adrift alone in a boat, haunted by an almost imper¬ 
ceptible suspicion of sighing, muttering ghosts. ‘ Throw 
me out, would you? But I would know where I was,’ 
mumbled Cornelius, surlily. ‘I’ve lived many years here.’ 
‘Not long enough to see through a fog like this,’ Brown 
said, lolling back with his arm swinging to and fro on the 
useless tiller. ‘Yes. Long enough for that,’ snarled Cor¬ 
nelius. ‘ That’s very useful,’ commented Brown. ‘ Am J 
to believe you could find that backway you spoke of blind¬ 
fold, like this ? ’ Cornelius grunted. ‘ Are you too tired 
to row?’ he asked, after a silence. ‘No, by God !’ shouted 
Brown, suddenly. ‘ Out with your oars there.’ There was 
a great knocking in the fog, which after a while settled 
into a regular grind of invisible sweeps against invisible 
tliole-pins. Otherwise, nothing was changed, and but for 
the slight splash of a dipped blade it was like rowing a 
balloon-car in a cloud, said Brown. Thereafter Cornelius 
lid not open his lips except to ask querulously for som^ 
body to bale out his canoe, which was towing behind the 
long-boat. Gradually the fog whitened and became lumi 
nous ahead. To the left Brown saw a darkness as though 
he had been looking at the back of the departing night 
All at once a big bough covered with leaves appeared above 
his head, and ends of twigs, dripping and still curved slen¬ 
derly, close alongside. Cornelius, without a word, took the 
tiller from his hand.” 


LORD JIM 


377 


CHAPTER XLIV 

“1 don’t think they spoke together again. The boat 
entered a narrow by-channel, where it was pushed by the 
oar-blades set into crumbling banks, and there was a gloom 
as if enormous black wings had been outspread above the 
mist that filled its depth to the summits of the trees. The 
branches overhead showered big drops through the gloomy 
fog. At a mutter from Cornelius, Brown ordered his men 
to load. ‘I’ll give you a chance to get even with them 
before we’re done, you dismal cripples, you,’ he said to 
his gang. ‘ Mind you don’t throw it away — you hounds.’ 
Low growls answered that speech. Cornelius showed much 
fussy concern for the safety of his canoe. 

“ Meantime, Tamb’ Itam had reached the end of his 
journey. The fog had delayed him a little, but he had 
paddled steadily, keeping in touch with the south bank. 
By and by daylight came like a glow in a ground glast 
globe. The shores made on each side of the river a dark 
smudge, in which one could detect hints of columnar forms 
and shadows of twisted branches high up. The mist was 
still thick on the water, but a good watch was being kept, 
for as Tamb’ Itam approached the camp the figures of two 
men emerged out of the white vapour, and voices spoke to 
him boisterously. He answered, and presently a canoe lay 
ilongside of his dug-out, and he exchanged news with the 
paddlers. All was well. The trouble was over. Then the 
men in the canoe let go their grip on the side of his dug- 
out and incontinently fell out of sight. He pursued his 
way till he heard voices coming to him quietly over the 
water, and saw now, under the lifting, swirling mist, the 
glow of many little fires burning on a sandy stretch, backed 


378 


LORD JIM 


by lofty thin timber and bushes. There again a look-out 
was kept, for he was challenged. He shouted his name 
as the two last sweeps of his paddle ran his canoe up on 
the strand. It was a big camp. Men crouched in many 
little knots under a steady murmur of early morning talk. 
Many thin threads of smoke curled slowly on the white 
mist. Little shelters, elevated above the ground, had been 
built for the chiefs. Muskets were stacked in small pyra¬ 
mids, and long spears were stuck singly into the sand near 
the fires. 

“ Tamb’ Itam, assuming an air of importance, demanded 
to be led to Dain Waris. He found the friend of his white 
lord lying on a raised couch made of bamboo, and sheltered 
by a sort of shed of sticks covered with mats. Dain Waris 
was awake, and a bright fire was burning before his sleep¬ 
ing-place, which resembled a rude shrine. The only son 
of Nakhoda Doramin answered his greeting kindly. Tamb’ 
Itam began by handing him the ring which vouched for the 
truth of the messenger’s words. Dain Waris, reclining on 
his elbow, bade him speak and tell all the news. Begin¬ 
ning with the consecrated formula, ‘ The news is good,’ 
.Tamb’ Itam delivered Jim’s own words. The white men, 
departing with the consent of all the chiefs, were to be 
allowed to pass down the river. In answer to a question 
or two, Tamb’ Itam then reported the proceedings of the 
last council. Dain Waris listened attentively to the end, 
toying with the ring which ultimately he slipped on the 
forefinger of his right hand. After hearing all he had to 
say he dismissed Tamb’ Itam to have food and rest. 
Orders for the return in the afternoon were given immedi¬ 
ately. Afterwards Dain Waris lay down again, open-eyed, 
while his personal attendants were preparing his food at 
the fire by which Tamb’ Itam also sat talking to the me" 


LORD JIM 


379 


who lounged up to hear the latest intelligence from the 
town. The sun was eating up the mist. A good watch 
was kept upon the reach of the main stream where the 
boat of the whites was expected to appear every moment. 

“ It was then that Brown took his revenge upon the 
world which, after twenty years of contemptuous and reck¬ 
less bullying, refused him the tribute of a common robber’s 
success. It was an act of cold-blooded ferocity, and it con¬ 
soled him on his death-bed like a memory of an indomitable 
defiance. Stealthily he landed his men on the other side 
of the island opposite to the Bugis camp, and led them 
across. After a short but quite silent scuffle Cornelius, who 
had tried to slink away at the moment of landing, resigned 
himself to show the way where the undergrowth was most 
sparse. Brown held both his skinny hands together behind 
his back in the grip of one vast fist, and now and then 
impelled him forward with a fierce push. Cornelius re¬ 
mained as mute as a fish, abject but faithful to his purpose, 
whose accomplishment loomed before him dimly. At the 
edge of the patch of forest Brown’s men spread themselves 
Out in cover and waited. The camp was plain from end 
to end before their eyes, and no one looked their way. 
Nobody even dreamed that the white men could have any 
knowledge of the narrow channel at the back of the island. 
Both its entrances were so narrow and overgrown that the 
very natives passing in canoes had to look for them care¬ 
fully. Brown yelled, ‘Let them have it,’ and fourteen 
shots rang out like one. 

“Tamb’ Itam told me the surprise was so great that, 
except for those who fell dead or wounded, not a soul of 
them moved for quite an appreciable time after the first 
discharge. Then a man screamed, and after that scream 
a great yell of amazement and fear went up from all th* 


380 


LORD JIM 


throats. A blind panic drove these men in a surging, 
swaying mob to and fro along the shore like a herd of cattle 
afraid of the water. Some few jumped into the river then, 
but most of them did so only after the third discharge. 
Three times Brown’s men fired into the ruck, Brown, the 
only one in view, cursing and yelling, ‘ Aim low! aim 
low ! 9 

“ Tamb’ Itam says that, as for him, he understood at the 
first volley what had happened. Though untouched, he fell 
down and lay as if dead, but with his eyes open. At the 
sound of the first shots Dain Waris, reclining on the couch, 
jumped up and ran out upon the open shore, just in time to 
receive a bullet in his forehead at the second discharge. 
Tamb’ Itam saw him fling his arms wide open before he 
fell. Then, he says, a great fear came upon him — not 
before. The white men retired as they had come — unseen. 

“ Thus Brown balanced his account with the evil fortune. 
Notice that even in this awful outbreak there is a superi¬ 
ority as of a man who carries right — the abstract thing —. 
within the envelope of his common desires. It was not a 
vulgar and treacherous massacre; it was a lesson, a retri¬ 
bution — a demonstration of some obscure and awful attri¬ 
bute of our nature which, I am afraid, is not so very far 
under the surface as we like to think. 

“Afterwards the whites depart unseen by Tamb’ Itam, 
and seem to vanish from before men’s eyes altogether; and 
the schooner, too, vanishes after the manner of stolen 
goods. But a story is told of a white long-boat picked up a 
month later in the Indian Ocean by a cargo-steamer. Two 
parched, yellow, glassy-eyed, whispering skeletons in her 
recognised the authority of a third, who declared that his 
name was Brown. His schooner, he reported, bound south 
with a cargo of Java sugar, had sprung a bad leak and sank 


LORD JIM 


381 


under his feet. He and his companions were the survivors 
of a crew of six. The two died on board the steamer which 
rescued them. No matter. Brown lived to he seen by me, 
and I can testify that he had played his part to the last. 

“It seems, however, that in going away they had neg¬ 
lected to cast off Cornelius’s canoe. Cornelius himself 
Brown had let go at the beginning of the shooting, with a 
rick for a parting benediction. Tamb’ Itam, after arising 
from amongst the dead, saw the Nazarene running about up 
and down the shore amongst the corpses and the expiring 
fires. He uttered little cries. Suddenly he rushed to the 
water, and made frantic efforts to get one of the Bugis’ boats 
into the water. ‘ Afterwards, till he had seen me,’ related 
Tamb’ Itam, ‘he stood looking at the heavy canoe and 
scratching his head.’ ‘ What became of him ? ’ I asked. 
Tamb’ Itam, staring hard atf me, made an expressive ges¬ 
ture with his right arm. ‘ Twice I struck, Tuan,’ he said. 
* When he beheld me approaching he cast himself violently 
on the giound and made a great outcry, kicking. Twice I 
gave a blow. He screeched like a frightened hen till he felt 
the point; then he was still, and lay staring at me while 
his life went out of his eyes.’ 

“ This done, Tamb’ Itam did not tarry. He understood 
the importance of being the first with the awful news at the 
fort. There were, of course, many survivors of Dain Waris’s 
party; but in the extremity of panic some had swam across 
the river, others had bolted into the bush. The fact is that 
they did not know really who struck that blow — whether 
more white robbers were not coming, whether they had not 
already got hold of the whole land. They imagined them¬ 
selves to be the victims of a vast treachery, and utterly 
doomed to destruction. It is said that some small parties 
did not come in till three days afterwards. However, a few 


382 


LORD JIM 


tried to make their way back to Patusan at once, and one of 
the canoes that were patrolling the river that morning was 
in sight of the camp at the very moment of the attack. It 
is true that at first the men in her leaped overboard and 
swam to the opposite bank, but afterwards they returned to 
their boat and started hesitatingly up stream. Of these 
Tamb’ Itam had an hour’s advance. 


CHAPTER XLV 

“When Tamb’ Itam, paddling madly, came into the 
town-reach, the women, thronging the platforms before 
the houses, were looking out for the return of Dain Waris’s 
little fleet of boats. The town had a festive air; here and 
there men, still with spears ot guns in their hands, could 
be seen moving or standing on the shore in groups. China¬ 
men’s shops had been opened early; but the market-place 
was empty, and a sentry, still posted at the corner of the 
fort, made out Tamb’ Itam, and shouted to those within. 
The gate was wide open. Tamb’ Itam jumped ashore and 
ran in headlong. The first person he met was the girl 
coming down from the house. 

“ Tamb’ Itam, disordered, panting, with trembling lips, 
and wild eyes, stood for a time before her as if a sudden 
spell had been laid on him. Then he broke out very 
quickly: ‘ They have killed Dain Waris and many more.’ 
She clapped her hands, and her first words were, ‘ Shut the 
gates.’ Most of the fort-men had gone back to their houses, 
but Tamb’ Itam hurried on the few who remained for their 
turn of duty within. The girl stood in the middle of the 
courtyard while the others ran about. ‘ Doramin,’ she cried 
fearfully, as Tamb’ Itam passed her. Next time he went by 




LORD JIM 


383 


ne answered her thought rapidly, ‘ Yes. But we have all 
the powder in Patusan.’ She caught him by the arm, 
and, pointing at the house, * Call him out/ she whispered, 
trembling. 

“ Tamb’ Itam ran up the steps. His master was sleeping. 
‘ It is I, Tamb’ Itam/ he cried at the door, ‘ with tidings 
that cannot wait.’ He saw Jim turn over on the pillow and 
open his eyes, and he burst out at once. 4 This, Tuan, is a 
day of evil, an accursed day.’ His master raised himself 
on his elbcw to listen — just as Dain Waris had done. And 
then Tamb’ Itam began his tale, trying to relate the story 
in order, calling Dain Waris Panglima, and saying, ‘ The 
Panglima then called out to the chief of his own boatmen, 
“ Give Tamb’Itam something to eat” ’— when his master 
put his feet to the ground and looked at him with such a 
discomposed face that the words remained in his throat. 

“ ‘ Speak out/ said Jim. 1 Is he dead ? ’ * May you live 

long/ cried Tamb’ Itam. ‘‘ It was a most cruel treachery. 
He ran out at the first shots and fell.’ . . . His master 
walked to the window and with his fist struck at the 
shutter. The room was made light; and then in a steady 
voice, but speaking fast, he began to give him orders to 
assemble a fleet of boats for immediate pursuit, go to this 
man, to the other — send messengers; and as he talked he 
sat down on the bed, stooping to lace his boots hurriedly, 
and suddenly looked up. ‘ Why do you stand here ? ’ he 
asked, very red-faced. ‘ Waste no time.’ Tamb’ Itam did 
not move. ‘ Forgive me, Tuan, but . . . but/ he began to 
stammer. i What ? ’ cried his master aloud, looking terrible, 
leaning forward with his hands gripping the edge of the 
bed. ‘ It is not safe for thy servant to go out amongst the 
people/ said Tamb’ Itam, after hesitating a moment. 

<•' Then Jim understood. He had retreated from one 


384 


LORD JIM 


world, for a small matter of an impulsive jump, and now 
the other, the work of his own hands, had fallen in ruins 
upon his head. It was not safe for his servant to go out 
amongst his own people ! I believe that in that very mo¬ 
ment he had decided to defy the disaster in the only way 
it occurred to him such a disaster could be defied ; but all I 
know is that without a word he came out of his room and 
sat before the long table, at the head of which he was 
accustomed to regulate the affairs of his world, proclaiming 
daily the truth that surely lived in his heart. But he was 
romantic — romantic — and, nevertheless, true. The dark 
powers should not rob him twice of his peace. He sat like 
a stone figure. Tamb’ Itam, deferential, hinted at prepara¬ 
tions for defence. The girl he loved came in and spoke to 
him, but he made a sign with his hand, and she was awed 
oy the dumb appeal for silence in it. She went out on the 
verandah and sat on the threshold, as if to guard him with 
her body from dangers outside. ' 

“ What thoughts passed through his head — what mem¬ 
ories ? Who can tell. Everything was gone, and he who 
had been once unfaithful to his trust had lost again all 
men’s confidence. It was then, I believe, he tried to write 
— to somebody—and gave it up. Loneliness was closing 
on him. People had trusted him with their lives — only 
for that; and yet they could never, as he had said, never 
be made to understand him. Those without did not 
hear him make a sound. Later, towards the evening, he 
came to the door and called for Tamb’ Itam. ‘Well,’ he 
asked. ‘There is much weeping. Much anger, too,’ said 
Tamb’ Itam. Jim looked up at him. ‘ You know,’ he mur¬ 
mured. ‘Yes, Tuan,’ said Tamb’ Itam. ‘Thy servant does 
know, and the gates are closed. We shall have to fight/ 
•Fight! What for ? 9 be asked. ‘ For our ’ ‘ I have 


LOKB JIM 


385 


no life,’ he said. Tamb’ Itam heard a cry from the girl at 
the door. ‘ Who knows ? ’ said Tamb’ Itam. ‘ By audacity 
and cunning we may even escape. There is much fear in 
men’s hearts, too.’ He went out, thinking vaguely of boats 
and of open sea, leaving Jim and the girl together. 

“ 1 haven’t the heart to set down here such glimpses as 
she had given me of the hour or more she had passed in 
there wrestling with him for the possession of her happiness. 
Whether he had any hope — what he expected, what he 
imagined —it is impossible to say. He was inflexible, and 
with the growing loneliness of his obstinacy his spirit 
seemed to rise above the ruins of his existence. She cried 
< Fight! ’ into his ears. She did not understand. There 
was nothing to fight for. He w~as going to prove his power 
in another way and conquer the fatal destiny itself. He 
iame out into the courtyard, and behind him, with stream¬ 
ing hair, wild of face, breathless, she staggered out, and 
leaned on the side of the doorway. ‘ Open the gates,’ he 
ordered. Afterwards turning to those of his men who were 
inside, he gave them -leave to depart to their homes. * For 
how long, Tuan ?’ asked one of them timidly. 1 For all life,’ 
he said, in a sombre tone,. 

“ A hush had fallen upon the town after the outburst of 
wailing and lamentation that had swept over the river like 
a gust of wind from the opened abode of sorrow. But 
rumours flew in whispers, filling the hearts with consterna¬ 
tion and horrible doubts. The robbers were coming back, 
bringing many others with them, in a great ship, and there 
would be no refuge in the land for any one. A sense of 
utter insecurity, as during an earthquake, pervaded the 
minds of men who whispered their suspicions, looking at 
each other as if in the presence of some awful portent. 

“The sun was sinking towards the forests when Dain 


386 


LOED JIM 


Waris’s body was brought into Doramin’s campong. Foui 
men carried it in, covered decently with a white sheet 
which the old mother had sent out down to the gate to 
meet her son on his return. They laid him at Doramin’s 
feet, and the old man sat still for a long time, one hand on 
each knee, looking down. The fronds of palms swayed 
gently and the foliage of fruit trees stirred above his head. 
Every single man of his people was there, fully armed, 
when the old nakhoda at last raised his eyes. He moved 
them slowly over the crowd, as if seeking for a missing 
face. Again his chin sank on his breast. The whispers of 
many men mingled with the slight rustling of the leaves. 

“ The Malay who had brought Tamb’ Itam and the girl 
to Samarang was there too. ‘Not so angry as many,’ he 
said to me, but struck with a great awe and wonder at the 
‘ suddenness of men’s fate, which hangs over their heads 
like a cloud charged with thunder.’ He told me that when 
Dain Waris’s body was uncovered at a sign of Doramin’s, 
he whom they often called the white lord’s friend was dis¬ 
closed lying unchanged with his eyelids a little open as if 
about to wake. Doramin leaned forward a little more like 
one looking for something fallen on the ground. His eyes 
searched the body from its feet to its head, for the wound 
maybe. It was in the forehead, and small; and there was 
no word spoken while one of the bystanders, stooping over 
the body, took otf the silver ring from the cold, stiff hand. 
In silence he held it up before Doramin. A murmur of dis¬ 
may and horror ran through the crowd at the sight of that 
familiar token. The old nakhoda stared at it, and sud¬ 
denly let out one great fierce cry, deep from the chest, 
a roar of pain and fury, as mighty as the bellow of a 
wounded bull, bringing great fear into men’s hearts by 
-<he magnitude of his anger and his sorrow that could be 


LORD JIM 


387 


plainly discerned without words. There was a great still¬ 
ness afterwards for a space, while the body was being 
borne aside by four men. They laid it down under a tree, 
and on the instant, with one long shriek, all the women of 
the household began to wail together; they mourned with 
shrill cries; the sun was setting, and in the intervals of 
screamed lamentations the high sing-song voices of two old 
men intoning the Koran chanted alone. 

“ About this time Jim, leaning on a gun-carriage, looked 
at the river, and turned his back on the house; and the 
girl, in the doorway, panting as if she had run herself to a 
standstill, was looking at him across the yard. Tamb’ 
Itam stood not far from his master, waiting patiently for 
what might happen. All at once, Jim, who seemed to be 
lost in quiet thought, turned to him and said, ‘ Time to 
finish this/ 

“‘Tuan?’ said Tamb’ Itam, with alacrity. He did nor 
know what his master meant, but as soon as Jim made a 
movement the girl started too and walked down into the 
open space. It seems that no one else of the people of the 
house was in sight. She tottered slightly, and about half- 
way down called out to Jim, who had apparently resumed 
his peaceful contemplation of the river. He turned round, 
setting his back against the gun. ‘Will you fight?’ she 
cried. ‘ There is nothing to fight for,’ he said; ‘ nothing is 
lost.’ Saying this, he made a step towards her. ‘ Will you 
fly ? ’ she cried again. ‘ There is no escape,’ he said, stop¬ 
ping short, and she stood still also, silent, devouring him 
with her eyes. ‘ And you shall go ? ’ she said slowly. He 
bent his head. ‘ Ah! ’ she exclaimed, peering at him as it 
were, ‘you are mad or false. Do you remember the night I 
prayed you to go away, and you said that you could not ? 
That it was impossible! Impossible! Do you remember you 


888 


LORD JIM 


said you would never leave me ? Why ? I asked for no 
promise. You promised unasked — remember/ ‘Enough, 
poor girl/ he said. ‘ I should not be worth having/ 

“ Tamb’ Itam said that while they were talking she would 
laugh loud and senselessly like one under the visitation of 
God. His master put his hands to his head. He was fully 
dressed as for every day, but without a hat. She stopped 
laughing suddenly. ‘For the last time/ she cried menac¬ 
ingly, ‘ will you defend yourself ? ’ ‘Nothing can touch me,* 
he said, in a last flicker of superb egoism. Tamb’ Itam 
saw her lean forward where she stood, open her arms, and 
run at him swiftly. She flung herself upon his breast and 
clasped him round the neck. 

“‘Ah! but I shall hold thee thus/ she cried. . . ‘Thov 
art mine!’ 

“ She sobbed violently. The sky over Patusan was blood 
red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous 
sun nestled crimson amongst the tree-tops, and the forest 
below had a black and forbidding face. 

“ Tamb’ Itam tells me that on that evening the aspect of 
the heavens was angry and frightful. I may well believe it, 
for I know that on that very day a cyclone passed within 
sixty miles of the coast, but there was hardly more than a 
languid stir of the air in the place. 

“ Suddenly Tamb’ Itam saw Jim catch her arms, trying 
to unclasp her hands. She hung on them with her'head 
fallen back; her hair touched the ground. ‘Come here!' 
his master called, and Tamb’ Itam helped to ease her down. 
It was difficult to separate her fingers. Jim, bending over 
her, looked long at her face, and ai at once ran to the 
landing-stage. Tamb’ Itam followed him, but turning his 
head, he saw that she had struggled up to her feet. She 
ran after the^ 9 few steps, then fell down heavily on her 


LORD JIM 


389 


knees. ‘ Tuan! Tuan! ’ called Taint)’ Itam, ‘ Look back ; 9 
but Jim was already in a canoe, standing up, paddle in 
hand. He did not look back. Tamb’ Itam had just time 
to scramble in after him when the canoe floated clear. The 
girl was then on her knees, with clasped hands, at the water- 
gate. She remained thus for a time in a supplicating atti¬ 
tude before she sprang up. ‘ You are false!’ she screamed 
out after Jim. ‘Forgive me,’ he cried. ‘Never! Never!’ 
she called back. 

“Tamb’ Itam took the paddle from Jim’s hands, it being 
unseemly that he should sit while his lord paddled. When 
they reached the other shore his master forbade him to 
come any farther; but Tamb’ Itam did follow him at a dis¬ 
tance, walking up the slope to Doramin’s campong. 

“ It was beginning to grow dark. Torches twinkled here 
and there. Those they met stood aside hastily to let Jim 
pass. The wailing of women came from above. The court¬ 
yard was full of armed Bugis with their followers, and of 
Patusan people. 

“ I do not know what this gathering really meant. Were 
these preparations for war, or for vengeance, or to repulse 
a threatened invasion ? -Many days elapsed before the 
people had ceased to look out, quaking, for the return of 
the white men with long beards and in rags, whose exact 
relation to their own white man they could never under¬ 
stand. Even for those simple minds poor Jim remains 
under a cloud. 

“ Doramin, alone, immense and desolate, sat in his arm¬ 
chair with the pair of flint-lock pistols on his knees, faced 
by an armed throng. When Jim appeared, at somebody’s 
exclamation, all the heads turned round together, and then 
the mass opened right and left, and he walked up a lane of 
averted glances. Whispers followed him; murmurs: ‘He 


390 


LORD JIM 


has worked all the evil.’ ‘He hath a charm.’ . . . He 
heard them — perhaps ! 

“ When he came up into the light of torches the wailing 
of the women ceased suddenly. Dcramin did not lift his 
head, and Jim stood silent before him for a time. Then he 
looked to the left, and moved in that direction with meas¬ 
ured steps. Dain Waris’s mother crouched at the head of 
the body, and the grey dishevelled hair concealed her face. 
Jim came up slowly, looked at his dead friend, lifting the 
sheet, then dropped it without a word. Slowly he walked 
back. 

“‘He came! He came,’ was running from lip to lip, 
making a murmur to which he moved. ‘ He hath taken it 
upon his own head,’ a voice said aloud. He heard this and 
turned to the crowd. ‘ Yes. Upon my head.’ A few people 
recoiled. Jim waited a while before Doramin, and then said 
gently, ‘ I am come in sorrow.’ He waited again. ‘ I am 
come, ready and unarmed,’ he repeated. 

“ The unwieldy old man, lowering his big forehead like 
an ox under a yoke, made an effort to rise, clutching at 
the flint-lock pistols on his knees. From his throat came 
gurgling, choking, inhuman sounds, and his two attendants 
helped him from behind. People remarked that the ring 
which he had dropped on his lap fell and rolled against the 
foot of the white man, and that poor Jim glanced down at 
the talisman that had opened for him the door of fame, love, 
and success within the wall of forests fringed with white 
foam, within the coast that under the western sun looks 
like the very stronghold of the night. Doramin, struggling 
to keep his feet, made with his two supporters a swaying, 
tottering group; his little eyes stared with an expression 
of mad pain, of rage, with a ferocious glitter, which the 
bystanders noticed, and then, while Jim stood — stiffened 


LORD JIM 


391 


and with bared head in the light of torches looking him 
straight in the face — he clung heavily with his left arm 
round the neck of a bowed youth, and lifting deliberately 
his right, shot his son’s friend through the chest. 

“ The crowd, which had fallen apart behind Jim as soon 
as Doramin had raised his hand, rushed tumultuously for¬ 
ward after the shot. They say that the white man sent 
right and left at all those faces a proud and unflinching 
glance. Then, with his hand over his lips, he fell forward, 
dead. 

“And that’s the end. He passes away under a cloud, 
inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively 
romantic. Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions 
could he have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordi¬ 
nary success ! For it may very well be that in the short 
moment of his last proud and unflinching glance, he had 
beheld the face of that opportunity which, like an Eastern 
bride, had come veiled to his side ? 

“ But we can see him, an obscure conqueror of fame, tear¬ 
ing himself out of the arms of a jealous love at the sign, at 
the call of his exalted egoism. He goes away from a liv¬ 
ing woman to celebrate his pitiless wedding with a shadowy 
ideal of conduct. Is he satisfied — quite, now, I wonder? 
We ought to know. He is one of us — and have I not stood 
up once, like an evoked ghost, to answer for his eternal con¬ 
stancy ? Was I so very wrong, after all ? Now he is no 
more, there are days when the reality of his existence comes 
to me with an immense, with an overwhelming force; and 
yet, upon my honour, there are moments, too, when I believe 
him to have been only a disembodied spirit astray amongst 
the passions of this earth — surrendering himself faithfully 
to the claim of his own world of shades. 


392 


LOKD JIM 


“ Who knows ? He is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the 
poor girl is leading a sort of soundless, inert life in Stein’s 
home. Stein has aged greatly of late. He feels it him 
self, and says often that he is ‘ preparing to leave all this 
preparing to leave, . while he waves his hand sadly at 
Ms butterflies.” 


I 




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